Painting the interior

I decided to paint all the plywood on the inside white, this includes the hull planking, transom, centerboard trunk, and gussets. All the mahogany, including the frames, seats, floorboards, trim (and the plywood deck when it is installed), will remain natural wood.

The plywood planking needs two coats of primer and at least two coats of paint. The mahogany frames are already encapsulated in epoxy and just need some varnish for UV protection.  The deck will be fiberglassed for strength and then also varnished.

To get the hull ready to paint, I removed the deck framing and taped off all of the mahogany that will be clear finished so I don’t get paint on it. If you guessed it took about 8 hours to tape everything you’d be right. I hope after all that effort it doesn’t bleed under the tape, but in any case I’m glad I did it so I didn’t have to carefully cut in the paint around the frame members for each of the four total coats.   

The primer is a two part epoxy (Interlux PrimeKote) which I applied with a foam roller and foam brush. 

I sanded after each coat of primer, which meant I had to vacuum and rinse the sanding dust off after sanding, so it was slow going.

After priming, I painted everything with a coat of Interlux Perfection, the same high gloss two part epoxy paint I used for the outsides of the hull.  I was originally going to use a flattening agent for the second coat to make the paint a semi-gloss or satin, but I liked the look of the full gloss so I painted the second coat the same way.

I also primed and painted the centerboard and rudder as I was doing the hull.

With everything painted, I got to finally remove the blue tape and see what it looks like!


Removing the tape was pretty easy but a little tedious. It took about five hours to remove all the tape.  Fortunately the tape worked well and left nice crisp lines so I have very little cleanup to do.  I’m really happy with the way it turned out and like the look of the mahogany framing against the white hull. I hope the two part epoxy paint will prove durable; I really don’t want to have to tape and paint it again any time soon.


Next step will be to install the deck framing, carlings, and blocking for the deck hardware and to put some tops and fronts on the seat supports (the frame gussets). I’m looking forward to doing some more woodworking! The paint is dry to the touch, but I’m not sure how long it takes to cure enough that I can sit inside the boat to work on it. 

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