A guy I know is currently looking at a TDB-21'. Unfortunately, it was painted, boat and blind. He would like to remove the paint from both surfaces. Anyone have any expertise on removing paint from a fiberglass hull via media blasting with either walnut shells or ground corn cobs??
Anyone have any experience with media blasting on fiberglass
- Thread starter RLLigman
- Start date
benp
Well-known member
I have never done it but working with aircraft composites they will not allow us to blast them due to possible de-lamination of layers
Maybe at low pressures it would be fine and I know they Fiberglass is not layered with honeycomb like the aircrafts so it might be no issues.
Maybe at low pressures it would be fine and I know they Fiberglass is not layered with honeycomb like the aircrafts so it might be no issues.
Bill Ferrar
Well-known member
I have not done it to any boats. I have friends that have had it done. They call somebody who comes and does the job. It works great much better then sanding it off.
FYI the boat then gets repainted with very little prep.
FYI the boat then gets repainted with very little prep.
Capt Rich Geminski
Well-known member
Check with a corvette restoration shop.
Jay K
Active member
Absolutely done all the time to more standard recreational boats and sailboats to remove bottom paint. I am by far an expert I have had diesel engines soda blasted as well as a boat bottom. I can tell you, if you want it clean, they will get it clean. I've had diesel engines completely blasted to bare metal. Boat bottoms will go to bare glass.
Doing it yourself would be quite the undertaking and likely make a horrible mess. These outfits that do it sometimes encase the entire work area in plastic and have special systems that can inject water or recirculate the media. You'll want to reach out to marine soda blasting outfits. Explain to them what you would like accomplish. I am pretty confident they could easily take care of it for you, for a price...of course.
Doing it yourself would be quite the undertaking and likely make a horrible mess. These outfits that do it sometimes encase the entire work area in plastic and have special systems that can inject water or recirculate the media. You'll want to reach out to marine soda blasting outfits. Explain to them what you would like accomplish. I am pretty confident they could easily take care of it for you, for a price...of course.
Jay K
Active member
RLLigman said:
Just to be clear, we have never done it ourselves. It's a massive undertaking on our boat. We've done it on small scale in a blasting cabinet and with a portable unit. Cars, bikes, boat parts, etc.
As someone mentioned, it's not an uncommon thing to do on fiberglass cars like corvettes. Trust me when I say this, you will commit yourself to a massive job and very expensive equipment to do an entire 21' boat. What we can do with $1000 of equipment might take weeks when someone who specializes in it with $20,000-$40,000 in equipment can do in a few hours.
If money is a concern, I would just sand a good etch into the current paint, clean, prep and then prime and paint over it.
look at product called aqua strip i used it on my tdb 17 to remove old paint over original gelcoat it worked well original gelcoat was not damaged the video on product calls for cellophane over product to seal moisture i had to do some spots twice scrubbing with stiff nylon brush but boat came out real nice just hose off envioment safe