Lackey Sailing | Further 73

March 22, 2023

Further 73

Wednesday

Now that the hull paint had sufficient cure time, I began masking for the trim paint, starting with the raised, decorative sheer strakes on each side. I began with a 1/2″ strip of vinyl fineline tape to define the edges, then covered this tape as completely as possible with regular masking tape, since the vinyl tape doesn’t absorb any paint and (1) tends to create runs and (2) overspray doesn’t stick well to the tape, causing frustrating freestyle ribbons of cured paint that are tedious during tape removal.

I repeated the process at the boottop, with fineline on each side of the stripe, and covered with more of the regular masking tape. I used a wider tape below the boottop since it also covered the 1″ strip of hull color there.

Next, I covered the entire remainder of the hull with masking paper, taping it securely everywhere. On this boat, with the sheer strake requiring trim paint as well as the boottop, it was easier to use all paper rather than wider plastic to cover the bulk of the hull, and anyway, I hate the waste and landfill-filling qualities of the plastic sheeting so was happy to avoid using it here.

With the masking complete, and after a final cleaning of the striping areas, I applied three coats of jet black gloss topcoat, which unsurprisingly was vastly more effective at hiding the primer than the yellow paint had been.