Setback with the flooring

Since the last post (in November) we have made progress but very little. Mostly mounting the chairs, leaning post, rod holders, cleats, etc. We noticed in Jan that our Durabak had the ability to peel off of the floor in certain sections....coming up in strips...we also noticed that the transition areas (where the floor meets the sidewalls) appeared to be "drawn" so that the durabak was not actually bonded to the floor or sidewall and would fail if stepped on or given some stress.

So, after some arguing (more reluctance and disgust) we pulled the seats, leaning post and hatches and began the removal of the durabak from the floor. This has been loads of fun, sandblasting (sandblasting pad on the grinders), sanding and scraping the durabak off, re-epoxy painting the floor....

The best we can figure is that the primer we used (which was suggested by Durabak as sufficient in the application) either did not bond correctly to the floor or the D-bak did not bond to the primer...in some areas we had great adhesion, in others, it was very $$ to have it pull away as it has....

The plan now is continue stripping, epoxy paint, prime and paint like we did the top coat (but with 4-5 coats of topper) and then put down strips of d-bak in the high-traffic areas. We think this will look a lot better too, so the entire inside of the boat is not grey.

We have had no problems with the d-bak in the areas that we applied it to finished top coat, only to those areas that we only primed. Damn that was expensive....

Durabak #2

We have all but finished applying the durabak to the flooring and top cap, and we still have 2 gal. left..so we are looking at doing the interior side walls, some other spots and we are sure that there are some sections of the floor that will need another coat. I have to say that I am impressed with the tenacity of the product and how tough it seems to this point. Here da pics:

Top Side and Durabak

Since the last post we have sanded, primed again, sanded, rolled-n-tipped a top coat, sanded, and rolled-n-tipped a second coat of top coat. For a couple of skeptics, that method has really impressed us with the finish that we got. Our only regret is that we rolled and tipped the primer horizontally.

The vertical roll-n-tip method left us with a great result, especially for two guys doing a project boat...

The last thing that we did was to apply the first of two coats of durabak to the flooring and to choice spots on the top, side caps and dash. This stuff is thick, and I recommend thinning it very slightly (product allows upto 15% but we did about 5%). Thinning it, allowed the stuff to be more workable, we noticed that as the pot life expired, the roller would tend to "pull strands" as you went and these were getting onto spots that we did not want, so a little xylene and it was gone. One other recommendation is to pull the tape while the durabak is still pretty wet (5-10 minutes). Here are the pics:
(that is a reflection of a barrel, 10ft away, on the side)


Before we durabak'd it:

After: