Removing paint of a Heron

Originally posted by JimC By a small tin of Nitromors first and try it, not the great big expensive ones. It never works that well for me.

I think the most improtant thing is lots of water to wash it off

Originally posted by Barty For the more adventurous people (and those used to using grinders) you can use a angle grinder with a fine sanding disc on it (the ones made with flaps of sand paper).  I did an entire mirror down to almost bare ply in 2 hours and then just finished it off with the orbital......this isn't the way for the inexperienced or feint-hearted but if your comfortable with this kind of tool you can be very accurate and careful.

Your a braver man than me. It is so easy to end up with lots of eliptical marks that go deeperthan I wouldwant to go. My old geep still carries the scars of my brothers attempts to sand with a disc sander on an electric drill and without huge amounts of filler she will never look great but a few battle scars dont matter on an old boat. 

> if the paint is in that poor a state, I want to know what is going
> on under it..

I think you're going to find out either way aren't you... By the time you've got down through umpteen layers of top coat and down to undercoat/primer then you are going to know if there are any problems with the underlying skin and treat it appropriately. Twenty layers of top coat will certainly hide a multitude of sins, but by the time you get down to a half layer of paint with a reasonable number of bare patches then you are going to have a pretty shrewd idea what's going on, because cracks, poor adhesion, all the rest of it are going to be highly visible... I'm not advocating leaving paint tha's in a poor state on, I'm just advocating leaving paint that is still good on!

Oh, and of course if we are dealing with a painted composite boat (and they have been around long enough to be getting into the restoration stakes now) then you *definitely* don't want to be sanding into the fibres: you definitely need to be stopping at primer/fairing filler.

Originally posted by rogerd My only concern using a sander is that it is very easy to go through the top veneer of ply. Not to much of a problem if you are going to paint but will totally ruin the look of a varnished deck

That's why these days I don't take my boats back to bare wood. OK its essential if you are going to varnish, but every time you do it you lose a little more strength. I'm now with the paint suppliers, who tell you that provided the old paint is still adhering, you should leave much of it on. I reckon now that I want a prepped boat to be showing about 50/50 undercoat primer, assuming they are distinguishable, with the odd bit of bare wood and top coat left. Looks horrible until you start painting again, but I think its better foor the boat in the long term. The downside of course is you lose all the satisfaction of the bare wood returning (and its a really nice sight :-)), but in my case I may be dealing with 3mm or even thinner ply, and it does no good at all to be removing any of it. Besides which I save an awful lot of effort in surface prep after the first coat goes on because there is so much less work to do in filling bumps, lumps, scraper marks etc etc... Oh, the other exception is if the plywood is already sick, and I want to try epoxy soaking it to keep it alive...