Almost ready to paint

We have now caulked and filled above the water line, we had 16 kilos, four bundles,  of Oakum already on the boat when we bought it and we have just received an order of another 12 kilos, we estimate we have used roughly 15 kilos to caulk the most exposed side.

Nearly every bolt had rusted through and had to be dug out vactaned, to stop any future rust we then coated in CPES and filled, the seams were all reefed and then strengthened with CPES caulked, primed and filled with our own black pudding, Isoflex and portland cement..

A logistical nightmare with the tide and mud to contend with, we ended putting three planks together with a long piece of string attached to all three this way the weight of the three planks sank sufficiently to leave a plank to work on when the tide comes in the planks were pulled back onto the pontoon.

A few pictures of the process

Black Pudding

The mix

seperate tub of cement, makes the black pudding easier to work with, break of a piece put it in the cement and knead like bread dough to create more of a putty.

Does what it says on the tin.

Masked up ready to be filled

Don't leave the tape to dry with the black pudding, once in remove the tape and tidy up any pulled areas.

Sanded, reefed, caulked and filled a coat of primer over the black pudding then a good coat of CPES and we are ready to paint.

The black pudding can be sanded flush without any staining to the primer, a downside to the original tar and cement mix favoured by old ship builders.

Sanded seam

We marked the water line by using a long pole with a paint brush attached and pulled the pontoon along the length of the boat marking the line as we passed, we can now start to antifoul, we have decided to go with EU45 antifoul, 45% copper mix, Stewart from EU45 has been down to the boat to help out with marking the water line and applying the paint between tides.

Black Pudding update

As per our previous post we are making our own filler compound, black pudding a mix of rubber paint and portland cement, to mix use a cordless drill and paint mixer adding the portland cement gradually until a thick bread dough consistency.

This is a dirty job, some people will leave the mix overnight, we made up small batches, a litre at a time and simply filled another tub with the dry portland cement, as with working with dough you use flour to handle and work the dough we applied the same logic to the black pudding by adding small balls of the mix to the cement which made the black pudding easier to handle, we then simply pushed the mix into the seams using pointing trails and our fingers, remember to prime the seams with pure rubber paint.

put four pairs of latex gloves on when you start, when they get too clogged up and they will you can pull one pair of and you have a clean pair underneath saves alot of time.

our not so new little runaround

Mask the seams, will be neater in the long run.