48" Mono Build

[electric]

Yes, Jesse is in our club in Houston. Great guy.

[Make-a-Wake]

I think he used to live in Gods country........................big ole Montana................?

[Fluid]

He still lives in God's Country; it's the US, even including Montana.

GodsCountrySign.jpg

[Make-a-Wake]

He still lives in God's Country; it's the US, even including Montana.

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Nice

[electric]

So, I have shifted into full blown paint mode. I am painting two other boats at the same time since there is a lot of set up in involved in this. Take a look at the filter I have set up to draw most all of the overspray onto the filter rather than all over the workshop. It works surprisingly well. It is clogged at this point and I am going to replace it before I start laying down the clear coats.

Also see the lovely red filters on the respirator. Imagine what my lungs would look like without it. You can see that I cover everything in the shop with plastic to be on the safe side. It's cheap for the plastic tarps and can save a lot of headaches.

So the brownish hydro is going to get gold lettering and pin stripes and then clear. Funny, that color is listed on the bottle as candy apple red? The smudges you see is the oil off my hands. I will clean it up before the clear. The red paint is for the JAE rigger and finally the big boat that started this project is behind the other two safely wrapped in plastic waiting for stickers before the clear.

I must admit it seems much harder to paint the water based stuff I am using. It takes many thin coats to avoid drips and thus more time painting. It might be because I am using a very small spraying tool and am having to thin the paint a bit to get it to flow well. On the plus side, no smell practically and much less trouble to clean up.

The clear is three part House of Kolor and I will be doing all three boats. Hopefully I can knock them all out one after the other in one sitting, but I have not quite figured out the mechanics of really doing it that way since overspray can be an issue as well as dry time. More to come, and then we will start the build on the big mono first. Should keep me busy for the winter.

[electric]

More pics. Note the red respirator in the second picture.

[electric]

It takes a lot of patience and I have to fight the desire to get order in my shop since everything is covered in plastic. I am going to clean up and get organized a little before I do the clear, because things happen pretty fast when you spray it. I am probably going to do three or four coats of clear and there is a very precise time allowed between coats to allow the clear to chemically bond to the next layer vs. the traditional mechanical bond done when you sand. Still have yet to get the perfect clear coat, but no big disasters yet either. Like anything the more you do it you get a little better at it. As I am painting I keep repeating...many thin coats no thick coats...

[electric]

And here is the Magic high dollar paint gun. No kidding this thing is great. If your boat is under 30" or so it is perfect. Disposable(because it so cheap), easy to set up and really sprays a nice even coat on. I am using a "real" gun on my bigger boats and for the clear, but this is a great tool for no money and very easy to dial in. I drove my self crazy with a fancy airbrush gun(still hope to master it someday). This thing is as plug and play as you can get for just painting something like a boat. The paint does need to be pretty thinned out of course. I ran it between 25lbs and 30lbs of pressure.

Harbor Freight 10 dollars. If you use a acetone to clean it the plastic jars will melt. Really best for the water based paint. You still need a gun if you want to spray on primer and I like a paint gun for the clear as well.

[electric]

Thought I would show a picture of the finished boat. Maiden voyage tomorrow.

[Make-a-Wake]

Looks super!! I say it still has an uncanny resemblance to the GT I got from Vern...............

Lets see some VID!!!!

[electric]

Well, the first day of running the new boat was a success. In that nothing blew up, no wreck occur and generally the boat held together well. I got about 52mph on the second run and the boat handled nicely. Everything is coming back cool and there is a lot of room to prop up. My goal is to get the boat up into low to mid 60's for oval racing. I did have have an interesting problem in the last run. I broke a Drive Dog. It had a crack in it and came apart when I got it ashore. This explained the boats loss of thrust in a little race I was doing. Forgot to put in the gps on that short run when I had propped up to a 3 blade x457. The boat was moving great, but handled worse. Probably need to raise the strut a bit. At any rate here are a few vids.

First one is the second run where I was GPS'ing the boat and just doing laps 3 and 4 to test it out some more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aM0PeFGJAng

This one is the kinda race where everyone has problems. On this one the boat is really not handling the new bigger prop well and this is when I cracked the drive dog in half thus the prop is slipping.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMlW2lboGk

More testing and tuning to come. Need to get it race ready in the next month or so.