How to Clean an Aluminum Boat for Painting
Salt, fresh water oxidation can ruin any paint. To keep your boat looking good and to protect the metal the paint needs to be refreshed from time to time. This can be a difficult job unless you either hire it out or follow a few simple procedures to achieve a nice clean paint job with little hassle.
Items Needed:
- 5 gallon bucket
- Water hose
- Dawn dish washing liquid
- Cotton cloth diapers or soft cotton cloth
- Klean-strip KS3 or comparable stripper specifically formulated for aluminum or steel
- Shammy or water absorbent cloth
- Five or six inch dual sander with matching Velcro disks
- Aluminum oxide primer
- Wash the boat with Dawn or other oil residue removing cleaning solution.
- Remove all the old paint. You may need to dry dock the boat to get to the bottom of the boat. There may be many coats of paint, even down to the original manufacturer paint.
- Use a paint stripper made for paint on aluminum or steel. Experienced boaters suggest Klean-strip KS3 to efficiently dissolve old paint to the original metal.
- Give the boat a second wash in Dawn or other oil dissolving solution. Make sure all oils, wax and debris is removed from the metal. Rinse with water.
- Dry with a shammy or other very absorbent cloth to pull oils and dirt away from the bare metal.
- Use a five or six inch dual sander with velcro disks if available to remove the dust and leave a clean finish to add primer. Clean and prepare the underside of the boat also.
- Verify that it is clean. It is very important that the boat is completely clean, without oil, wax, dust and is completely bare metal. Any oil or old paint will affect how the primer grabs the metal, which will affect how the paint grabs the primer.
- Mask off wood or areas you don't want to paint.
- Prime the boat using an aluminum oxide primer.