At this point in time, the boat is underway and almost ready for the gel coat! Only one/two steps left -the clean up. Today I was kind of excited to be honest. Because today I get to use acid! The acid we used is called Acetone Finish 1, and I pretty much used the entire 946 mL bottle.
What I did was put the Acetone Finish 1 in an aluminum tin, got an old sponge that my mom didn’t really care about and dipped the sponge in the container and washed the boat with it. The boat (at this point) has already been vacuumed, so It doesn’t have any loose dirt and stuff. After I finished washing the boat with the Acetone Finish 1 (by wash, I mean I put the corner of the sponge into each hole that has been dremeled and cleaned it), I vacuumed it one more time. I then got another aluminum tin and filled it with water and another sponge. This one was nicer, and I proceeded to scrub the entire boat…hard! When I was finished, you could put your hand on top of the boat and wipe it a cross the the entire boat and your hands will have no fiberglass sand on it what so ever. My arms and shoulders were aching. I was very happy with how it turned out. And I was quite confident that we were not going to get any air bubbles when we put the paint on.
This is me with the old sponge & acid cleaning each hole individually.
I am now vacuuming the boat using a prop of a smaller vacuum duct taped on.
I am now scrubbing the boat trying not to use too much water since the holes are unprotected.
The boat is now nice shinny, and clean ALL READY for some gel coat that is supposed to come in the mail tomorrow.
This was probably one of the less timely days, but it was definitely one of the most important.
Oh shoot – I forgot to mention that while I was scrubbing the boat with water, my dad found out that if you follow/trace over what you scrubbed with a paper towel/rag it would help clean it and or clean it better. So yeah, my dad gave me a hand. Thanks Dad.