Painting

Painting has finally begun. We are using some pretty toxic epoxies and thinners so we have added a lot of forced ventilation into the hull. Due to the low flash-point (the point at which the fumes will ignite) of the solvents, all the blowers are set up to blow fresh air into the hull rather than suck out fumes which could be ignited by sparks from the blower motors. The blowers, combined with the use of good respirators, seems to be keeping things safe inside even with the warm weather we've been having lately.  In the past couple of days, we have prepped the interior from the bow back to the forward engine room bulkhead (this is roughly half the boat) and applied a zinc epoxy primer to all the bare metal spots and welds. This, combined with the zinc primer coat that the steel originally came with from our steel supplier, gives us a very good undercoat for the 235 marine epoxy primer that we'll start with tomorrow. Once the front half of the boat is completely primed, we'll seal it off with plastic (to keep out dust and grit) and start prepping the aft half (engine room, wheelhouse, and aft cabin). -PB