I bought 5 gallons of enviromentally friendly stripping compound from Defender for over $250..... At that price it had to be good right? Following the instructions carefully we tested a small area and found that after about 30 minutes the paint scraped off easily...
GREAT! we thought.... We masked off the boot strap and taped a 24" sheet of plastic vapor barrier above it to protect the topsides from overspray.
At this point we applied the compound to the WHOLE bottom. Everything was looking good and I had to go to work for a few hours so we decided to come back at 5pm to scrape off the stripper, powerwash the bottom and celebrate a job well done!... HA!
Very clearly the instructions told me that the stripper could be left from 3 to 24 hours so the 5 hours we were going to be gone wouldn't be any problem at all... Right??
When we returned about 4 o'clock (an hour earlier than we planned) we took the scrapers at tried to remove the bottom paint.... NOTHING!!!! The material had become so hard it was like another layer of paint...
So now what do we do??? We tried to moisten the stripper but that didn't work.... Eventually, we re-applied another layer of stripper to the starboard (right) side and scraped our arms off and here is what we ended up with... only about 2/3's of the bottom paint was gone at 7 o'clock... On the port side all I could do was to powerwash the hardened stripper off.
By the way, 3 other people came to help and we still only got a little done....
On a happy note, Bill, the man who owns the farm brought us 1000 gallons of water in a special fresh water tank trailer which made powerwashing possible...
This weekend I will try another stripping product and a more powerful powerwasher... Who knows, it can't be worse than it is now can it? Really, can it? Stay tuned....
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