Seems like I am writing a blog on this painting job. My son is away at camp and my wife has a job out of town for two weeks so I have the entire week to devote to the BellBoy.
Today I re-cut the instrumentation on the helm box. I removed the external speaker for the SH radio as the RAM mic 's speaker volume is enough to hear at speed. I moved the switches to the vertical plane of the box and centered the speedo and tach on top. That left me room for left and right fuel gauges (a first for the BellBoy!) and the redundant Hummingbird depth finder and GPS ram mount on the right. Since I epoxied the Hummingbird transducer to the hull bottom and will never get it off, I reinstalled the depth finder just for so. Of course the Garmin 540s has its own transducer. Now I have two readings...
I then applied the first coat of Pettit Easypoxy red to the hatch and helm box and spotlight. Man is that vivid!
As that was drying, I rolled the BellBoy out into the driveway and began sanding the topside in anticipation for the primer coat. (Could I just share how incredibly HEAVY my tongue weight has become since I removed the Merc??? After 4 hours of that I still see shiny spots on the gelcoat!! I think I will circle them in pencil and then hit them again with 220 grit on the mouse sander before I mask off the topside and apply the primer. The tricky part will be masking off the emblems. I tried to pry them off but it seems the brads securing them are barbed. I thought they would snap before they came off so I will try my hand at a good masking job. We'll see...
More soon
Bob
Today I re-cut the instrumentation on the helm box. I removed the external speaker for the SH radio as the RAM mic 's speaker volume is enough to hear at speed. I moved the switches to the vertical plane of the box and centered the speedo and tach on top. That left me room for left and right fuel gauges (a first for the BellBoy!) and the redundant Hummingbird depth finder and GPS ram mount on the right. Since I epoxied the Hummingbird transducer to the hull bottom and will never get it off, I reinstalled the depth finder just for so. Of course the Garmin 540s has its own transducer. Now I have two readings...
I then applied the first coat of Pettit Easypoxy red to the hatch and helm box and spotlight. Man is that vivid!
As that was drying, I rolled the BellBoy out into the driveway and began sanding the topside in anticipation for the primer coat. (Could I just share how incredibly HEAVY my tongue weight has become since I removed the Merc??? After 4 hours of that I still see shiny spots on the gelcoat!! I think I will circle them in pencil and then hit them again with 220 grit on the mouse sander before I mask off the topside and apply the primer. The tricky part will be masking off the emblems. I tried to pry them off but it seems the brads securing them are barbed. I thought they would snap before they came off so I will try my hand at a good masking job. We'll see...
More soon
Bob
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