Tried a search on this topic, but it’s not easy on my phone. So here goes a new thread on the subject... Last year we took our steel rudders/struts down to bare metal and had a local boat yard company prime/bottom paint them. Hauled out this year to paint the hull and discovered the rudders/struts were badly flaking off bottom paint.
We actually contracted with the same company that did the rudders to paint the hull. Beyond the fact that company basically went under during the middle of our job (a story unto itself, for sure!), they couldn’t readily determined what went wrong. My research leads me to believe it could have been they didn’t properly prep the metal for the primer to adhere to; the didn’t let the primer cure long enough; or they used the wrong primer.
At this point, while we are once again taking them down to bare metal, what is the best way to paint/coat/anti-foul them? FYI we’re not going to use PropSpeed, and the Petit Zinc Barnacle Barrier spray we used on the props and shafts worked really well.
In the photos, the strut hasn’t been touched. But any black bottom paint that comes off has white on the back, which was the primer. The rudder we have almost finished scraping and will sand next.
We actually contracted with the same company that did the rudders to paint the hull. Beyond the fact that company basically went under during the middle of our job (a story unto itself, for sure!), they couldn’t readily determined what went wrong. My research leads me to believe it could have been they didn’t properly prep the metal for the primer to adhere to; the didn’t let the primer cure long enough; or they used the wrong primer.
At this point, while we are once again taking them down to bare metal, what is the best way to paint/coat/anti-foul them? FYI we’re not going to use PropSpeed, and the Petit Zinc Barnacle Barrier spray we used on the props and shafts worked really well.
In the photos, the strut hasn’t been touched. But any black bottom paint that comes off has white on the back, which was the primer. The rudder we have almost finished scraping and will sand next.