Boatbuilding - Painting the hull! (Tally Ho / EP99)

[Music] hi my name's leo and i'm a boat builder and a sailor and i'm on a mission to rebuild and restore this 111 year old classic sailing yacht tallyho now this week we are hoping to finally start painting so we just have a last little bit of prep to do and then we're going to start slapping some coats of paint on [Music] so [Music] [Music] so we just finished gluing in the plugs for the center line which was made out of purple heart to match the centerline timber and we used a forstner bit to drill a counter bore into each of the plugs so that they would seat against the bolts that run through the centerline timbers the purple heart proved pretty hard to drill because it is such a dense and hard wood and we actually use cutting oil to make that process a little easier on the drill bits [Music] [Music] food [Music] so we're just doing the last bits of prep before we start painting we're going to paint the bottom of the boat under the water line with one type of primer and above the waterline with a different type of primer now the primer that goes on the bottom of the boat actually is going to go above the waterline by about six inches so we're just going to tape off a really rough line there and just paint up to it roughly and then the top side primer is actually going to go on top of that bottom primer and it's going to overlap it and come about two inches below the final water line and what we hope the final water line will be now a lot of people have been asking about the water line how do we know where it is or where it's going to be how do you possibly calculate or guess um how about will float and the answer for me is i just look at the drawings albert strange's drawings clearly have the the designed water line on them now how the designer actually calculates that line is uh much more complicated and i'm not going to go into it now but it involves a lot of calculations and is based sort of on where the theoretical center of gravity is of the boat and that obviously includes a little bit of guesswork as well because it's very hard to calculate exactly how much each part of the boat weighs now it's very common when a boat is launched that she doesn't float exactly on her lines the boat might be too high it might be too low it might be trimmed uh forwards or after you know the bow the stern might be too high out of the water and the way that is solved is that most boats have some amount of internal ballast in them so lots of lumps of lead in this case it can be different things sometimes can be just rocks and those can be moved around or taken off the boat or have more added to them so if the boat is too low in the water you can take some of that internal ballast out if she's too high you can put more in and then you can trim it forwards and half to adjust the trim of the boat in four and a half direction so in this case i'm able to find the water line simply by using pencil marks that i've already made on the centerline of the boat so we can use those marks firstly to make sure that the boat is actually trimmed correctly because she has to be level in a four and a half direction before we use a laser level or a water level so we can reference the waterline mark on the stem and the one on the stern post make sure they are exactly level and that means the boat is level in the four and a half direction we'll also make sure it's level in a port and starboard direction um using the center line marks on the deck beams and on the keel and then we can transfer those water line marks from inside the boat to outside the boat using a water level and then we can use a laser level or a water level to project that height into a horizontal line and then tape it off on the hull this is actually really fun like it's straight up everything's fun after longboarding right yeah anything is fun i'm gonna go home and do my taxes later whoo doggy see it's just a really good way to help you appreciate the small things in life that's right [Applause] that is right now we're standing have we got left oh i hope not much i don't think much i mean patrick are just knocking off all these last little skims of filler that i did yesterday and then megan and peter inside getting the center line making sure it's all level and plumb so they can scrap out a water line and then we're gonna clean it up clean everything and hopefully throw some primer on it so anyway we're just making sure the boat is sitting on its lines correctly um all its lofting lines that we have scribed at various spots so we're straightening the boat up so that involves running a plumb bob from the center line of the deck beams down to the center line of the keel um so we're just adjusting jack stands to wrap the boat back into position the most we've seen over the course of the project because we've checked it multiple times um it's only been as far out as like i'd say three eighths to one side and you just testing it's why we're doing that right now why is that important right now we are doing it right now because we're about to laser level the water line on here and to get both sides symmetrical the boat needs to be sitting level so most of the weight of the boat is still sitting on the keel um and so boat stands essentially uh balance the boat while most of its weight is bared on its center line um and so i've actually seen a boat have all of its jack stands taken off of one side and it didn't tip over it probably had a little bit of a list to the other side um but they were purposefully tipping the boat over to destroy it um and so they they removed all the jack stands and it stood still [Music] working so hard right now oh yeah this is gonna make great great youtube footage [Music] so the last little bit of prep for paint is done the hull is as fair as it's ever going to get at least it's as fair as we're ever going to get it so now it's time to start putting paint on so we're going to start by painting the area below the waterline with a rot resistant primer and then after a couple of coats of that we're going to move on up to the top sides do do do do [Music] so we're working on putting a second coat of primer on which would be the two coat base coats any bottom paint would eventually go on in the future [Music] well it's been about a month here on tally ho and my time has come to head off to montana to guide fly fishing for the summer and be out there until maybe september or so and kind of bittersweet to leave i'm excited for the summer and to make some money and spend some time on the river but it's been a life-changing experience and i hope to come back and fall and see what the next step is and put some more sweat and blood and tears into this project so we've got the primer on the boat below the waterline choosing the paints of the boat is a bit of a process or it has been for me um because there's a lot of different options and a lot of the options over here in the states aren't the options i'm familiar with and also there's just lots of different ways of doing it and a lot of people have different opinions on the best way of doing it so for example over here a lot of people don't actually prime under the waterline at all they just apply their anti-fowling bottom paint straight on the bare wood now anti-fouling is a paint which is poisonous to marine growth and so it stops things from growing on the boat and obviously if things do grow on the boat that is a problem because it slows the boat down a lot and it can also cause problems with the timber but personally i like the idea of having some kind of primer underneath it i was looking at a lot of different options but this is a primer which is used by a lot of boat builders here in the us under the waterline um it's rot resistant and it's got a very heavy solid base so it makes a good thick strong coat underneath the antifouling and one of the benefits to it being orange is actually that it makes it easier to see when your antifouling is wearing thin which happens over time because most antifungal wears off and that's part of the way that it actually works to get rid of marine growth and so when it gets thin you need to put more on because otherwise you can get worms boring into your wood and so on so that orange color could actually be pretty useful because you start seeing it when all the entertaining is worn off and you'll know you need to put more on [Music] for a wooden boat like this you generally want something that is not too hard and brittle so a lot of the two-part paints epoxies and so on uh they're they're very long-lasting they're very shiny they're very hard and hard wearing um but on a wooden boat the planks are gonna move especially uh you know a new planking job there's a little plaque is going to move around and with that hard paint it's so brittle that it's just going to crack and it's going to show up big cracks along all the seams and stuff this bottom paint and the paints that we're using on the top sides are going to be a softer more forgiving paints um you know and so they're not going to be quite as glossy quite as shiny which generally comes with a harder paint they're not going to be quite as uh resistant to wear um they have to be you know re-coated uh every season or every two or three seasons but they actually will look better and provide better coverage really because they won't be cracking and splitting all over the place after looking at a few different products all of which were very good actually but i settled on using kirby's paints and they're a very traditional paint maker on the east coast and they've been making paint in the same family for 175 years which is pretty impressive and they have a really good set of products and good colors so i've designed a custom color with them which they've named tally ho off-white and so it is a slightly off-white just a little tiny bit of cream in there and that's the color we're going to be painting on our top sides and it is going to be a gloss coat but it's a lot less glossy than modern two-part or polyurethane paints so now that we know the boat is sitting on her lines she's level in every direction now we need to define our waterline we already have a mark of the height of the waterline on the hull like i said earlier it's actually two inches below the final water line but we have that mark the boat's on our lines and so we just need to project a horizontal line now all the way around the boat and tape that off which will make the line that we can paint our top side paint down to so so i got the water line taped off last night and now we're getting ready to put the first coat of primer on the top sides so the guys are just wiping it down with some denatured alcohol right now to clean it off we've vacuumed all the dust the last little bit of filler and sanding so this water line that i defined last night is not actually going to be our final water line we're still going to put anti-fouling paint bottom paint on the boat and when we do that we're going to overlap the top side paint slightly and the final water line is probably going to be about two inches higher than the line that we've got taped off right now the reason for that is that although we hope that the final water line will be the designed water line with the topside paint coming a little bit below that it gives us more versatility if for some reason we have to raise or lower the water line a bit or change it in some other way we have that option too and there's a little bit of leeway with that top side paint coming down below the water line brush your seat belts on youtube okay cut that we'll get that impressed [Music] hmm [Music] hmm [Music] [Applause] [Music] so now one question which i know a lot of people will be asking is why haven't we filled the seams yet why didn't we do that before painting and there's a simple answer the reason that we are painting now the reason that we want to paint as quickly as possible is because we put the planking on recently and we caulked the boat up recently and we want to seal the planks so that they don't continue to lose too much moisture too quickly because we're trying to reduce the rate at which they shrink which will reduce the amount of cracks that appear between the planks before the boat is put in the water now the seam compound that i want to use it takes a long time to go hard before you can paint over it or sand it or anything like that now i've also got this time pressure of having to move the boat so i'm taking that into account so in juggling all these things and trying to work out the best order of doing things we decided that what we do is just paint the boat leave the seams empty for now and then later on when we got more time when we've moved the boat we can get all those seams filled the boat will need more coats of paint anyway we're only putting on you know sort of half the coats it will need finally so we're not really giving ourselves any extra work there and that seam compound can come a little later yeah so while some people think maybe it's a shame to cover up uh such beautiful wood obviously below the water line you need an ablative anti-fowling bottom paint um to prevent growth on the bottom of your boat it helps prevent algae growth and muscles and and barnacles so below the water lines that's very important to use an anti-fowling uh below the water paint top sides although some some boats are varnished it's a it's a whole lot more upkeep a whole lot more maintenance you have to build in a in a slightly different way uh varnish halls will have splines in them or they'll be tight seamed in addition to that the uv uh from sunlight would you you'd be doing tedious varnishing every season it shows imperfections it also isn't a very traditional look um it looks fine on on a little speedboat um but uh the the style of boat that this is it's it's vintage it's era calls for for white topside paint quite right quite right [Music] ah [Music] so we've got our two coats of primer on the top sides now i will admit that i'm not a professional painter i'm not the most knowledgeable boat painter at all and i think pete would probably happily admit the same with sort of figuring it out and asking questions of our friends who are very good at painting boats and so there's obviously a lot of different opinions and ways of doing things we decided to roll the primer on using just rollers and that seemed like the best option at the time but actually looking back on it now if we did it again i would roll and tip it or even just brush it on because we actually got quite a lot of roller marks in our paint um leaving a sort of orange peel texture and so we we've actually had to although i didn't film it we actually had to sand that primer back down quite a bit to get it to a nice smooth texture smooth enough to take that top coat and not have those roller marks showing through so it was quicker to apply the primer with just those big rollers but we did pay for it later on and i wouldn't do it like that again but anyway it's smooth now it's been sanded uh it's still got good thick layer of primer on and so we're going to get on with our top coats we're going to be rolling and tipping those and we're figuring out the best ratios for thinning the paint and adding brush conditioner and depending on the heat and various other factors but the first and maybe even the second coat of the top coat gloss paint are almost like practice runs really because they will be covered up by later coats and possibly even sanded back a little bit what do you just tell me why you're painting the bed very much we're practicing rolling and tipping we're not allowed to do it on the boat yet we're not allowed to do it that's a hell of a way to put it on the boat yet either okay none of us are loved no i got the admiral coming by for for bunk inspections later so trying to keep up appearances you don't roll and tip every bed frame you made yeah how's that how's it look pete how's this bed frame i don't think this is gonna float we're gonna have to put some pontoons on it is it gonna pass the yacht inspection there i think the fasteners are bad [Music] [Music] so the various different additives we've we've used in the paint help maintain a wet edge while we're rolling and tipping it on the boat um you you need that paint to flow while you're you're especially tipping it uh getting all the roller marks off and you're always bringing your brush back into the the wet paint back into the wet and so um those those additives help that paint uh stay stay flowing and not not kicking off not tacking too fast so you have a little bit of time to get your brush strokes in there and it's kind of a small window if you were to go too far back say you're working in a two foot zone and you go three or four feet back that paints although it's only been on there for a couple of minutes it does start to tack over pretty quickly and if you if you brush into it you can get overlap where a new layer is formed and it's it's it's visible you can see little waves kind of forming in the paint there okay [Music] hello you're listening to npr this is uh on the steps we're doing like family photos just got two coats of top paint on the old gal here about uh about to peel back the old blue tape those of you that thought that we were just painting a blue stripe on there are about to be corrected megan you say something i'm i'm rambling what are we doing what are we doing megan taking the tape off we get to see the final paint job well we could see the line that we made wait wait but this is almost like philosophical did we make a line or did the line did we make did we make a line or did we make two intersecting planes was the line already there and we just discovered it rediscovery leo's looking at me like i can't use any of this footage it's tarnishing my reputation drew me in this interview okay okay okay okay from the top from the top blah blah blah blah blah blah you say we paint it i'll say we're taking off the blue tape okay that's nice yeah a little bit of uh rehearsal yeah i like that i like that all right okay i'm gonna go first right yeah hey youtube uh okay so so we spent this week uh painting a couple of bring that camera there we go no it's really not bad huh [Music] so [Music] i think i might go into tape peeling you know just specialize in uh in feeling being that being like the tape peeler guy in the yard you know oh called patrick he's the best paint tape peeler in the whole the whole business [Music] a 1 800 peeler [Music] this is an old shipwreck trick you take the two pieces and you do them at the same time shut up patrick [Music] hit it one two three [Music] so watching and filming that tape getting peeled off was one of the most satisfying things ever um and i'm really pleased with the paint job the boat looks great i think we've got two coats of primer on the bottom two coats primer on the top and a couple of gloss top coats on the top sides as well so that means the planking is really well sealed now inside and out which was the whole point of painting now we do still have to put in the seam compound we're gonna do that after we move the boat and then after that we're gonna put another two or three coats of top coat on the top sides and we'll be getting an even better finish with that this is really just sort of building up the thickness and the layers so the finish isn't perfect and then eventually we'll be putting on the antifoul on the bottom and with that we'll define our actual final water line which will be a bit higher than the water line that you see on the boat now and it'll also be a much nicer color so the boat won't be orange on the bottom forever now the next job is to do a little bit of work on the ballast keel and get it fastened back onto the keel timber and then finally to move the boat but until then thanks a lot for watching and a massive massive thank you to everyone who has donated or otherwise supported the tallyho project it does make a huge huge difference it means we're able to carry on this work and it means i'm able to make and edit these videos so i really really appreciate it and i'll see you guys next time [Music] cheers [Music] you

Channel: Sampson Boat Co

Views: 623,251

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Id: QcjILqScB3U

Length: 35min 16sec (2116 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 05 2021