Refinishing my h16. Would appreciate some help.

Hello everyone. I'm relatively new to this forum and would like to introduce myself and my new found obessive relationship with a 1980's h16.

I purchased her a few weeks ago and considering how crappy the winds are Down here at the moment I thought i would take the opportunity for some maintence. I have already replace the tram and most of the rigging. I would appreciate and he,p or advice anyone has to offer.

Next on the list
1) refinish hulls ( happening tomorrow am)
- sand
- putty
- sand
- gelcoat basecoat
- freehand graphics with contrast tinted gelcoat
- clear coat marine systems epoxy coating

2) refinish aluminum
- here is where I would like some advice. As i have completely dismantled the boat I thought it might be a good opportunity to also refinish the crossbar, sidebar, corner castings, pillions, mast, and boom. Now on my old h16 everything is plain aluminum not the fancy black anodized stuff you see today. Some stuff is dinged but mostly it's just scuffed up. My plan was to do the following
- use the following rustoleum products in this order
- aluminum primer base coat
- enamel primer (apparently doubles the strength of the final finish)
- flat black high strength enamal finish

I'm just worried that this finish will end up chipping over time.

Thanks for reading this far! Can't wait to get this done and get her back out on the ocean! I really appreciate all the advice and knowledge that is available on this forum and look forward to being a active member in the future.

Cheers,
Tom

I have always just taken my boat apart every season and rubbed all the bare aluminum down with a thin coat of vasaline.
I don't see why painthing would not work. as long as you can still get the crossbars to fit in the mounts. I was actually thinking of putting roll on truck bed liner on mine this time just to see how that would hold up.

_________________
Why did I sell my 16?

Thanks for the advice millipede.

I've decided to go with the rustoleum enamel primer and high performance enamel after wet sanding the aluminum a bit

Today We managed to completely disassembled almost everything and sand down one of the hulls and prep it for paint. We did run into one problem though. One casting is almost impossible to get out of a front pillion and another is very stuck in a cross bar. So far I can move it about 1 inch and no more. Ive tried dry Teflon soray and wd40 and smacking it with a rubber mallet with limited success. There doesn't appear to be any warped and the castings are in great condition.

Any advice? I'm letting some wd40 soak in the overnight to see if it helps.

Another question arose while sanding the hulls. The inside middle 1/3 of both hulls are "springy" when pressed on. Not completely solid like the other side but also not soft like I've seen on other boats so I don't think it's delimitation. I had someone check the hulls a few weeks ago that sells used hobies and he told me everything looked to be ship shape. Does this flexing sounds like something I should be concerned about? Is there a way to reinforce the hull from the inside by simply spraying epoxy with some filler?

On so many questions.

Please take pictures of the whole regelcoating process!! I plan on doing this as well and would love some tips and suggestions. When I removed my old hulls, I supported the trampoline assembly and let the hulls hang. Some PB blaster, a little water in the hulls for weight and a rubber mallet and they eventually came off.

Painting aluminum is usually a bad idea. It tends to chip and scratch and look worse than faded anodize pretty quickly. The nice thing about clear anodized aluminum is that it doesn't show damage nearly as much as colored anodize or paint.

For your hull refinishing, there is no need to seal the gelcoat with clear epoxy. It's an extra step that, if anything, is likely to make the boat look worse, not better. Gelcoat makes up the outer-most finish on all (fiberglass) Hobies directly from the factory.

The springy area that you found on your hull is an indication of some sort of damage to that section of hull. It's most likely delamination, but could also be an indication of damage to the inner fiberglass skin. It should be repaired before it gets worse.

sm

Well crap.

I'm taking the hulls to a dealer on Monday or Tuesday for further evaluation. Don't want to throw all the product and time away on hulls that aren't worth the effort. Checked the serial number today, it was under a ton of gelcoat and half sanded off. It's either a really weird 88 or a 80 with a random line in the middle of the 0. Unfortunately it think its a 0. If so I'll be contacting the guy I bought it from as he signed a bill of sale stating the the hulls were at oldest from 1986.

Finally got the castings off, wd40 overnight made it much much easier. Came right off.

Ill post some picks of my Sketchy rigged workshop and progress asap.

Thanks for advice.

To revisit the "springy" issue...there are limits to everything. These boats have no bulkheads or internal reinforcements, so some level of flex is acceptable on long flat sections of hull. For example, Hobie 18 bows have a tendency to flex if pushed on fairly hard, so some amount of flex is to be expected. But if there is a specific section of the hull that is noticably more flexible than surrounding areas, it's pretty likely that the area is dammaged in some way. First thing I would do would be to preform a "coin tap" test. Take a coin and rapidly tap it on the surface in the area of the defect. If the sound goes from high pitched to low pitched, the sandwich has delaminated.

sm

That's some great advice. Thanks sm. I'll give it a try tomorrow.

I've decided to go ahead and use what I go and do the best i can with it. Its not ideal but if it all goes to hell at least it was a good learning experience

So some progress and to show you all what I'm dealing with. Here is that front access hatch after being removed. It looks like the previous owner may have used some sort of rabid animal to remove the previous deck section. I can't imagine how he thought this ragged hole with a few screws was a adequate repair.

Hardly a round hole.

Here you can see how the bottom section has about a 1/2" more material cut out in some sections.


For a repair I drilled a few extra holes in the deck around the access hole and filled it with 105 epoxy mixed with 209 slow harder as its hot as hell here in florida right now and I'm working outside. As a filler I used a combination of the 404 high-density filler and the 406 colloidal silica. I used a fairly liquid mixture that I injected into the drilled holes until it came out of the voids. It keep it in the hole I used some of the blue painters taped.

I then put some mold release on the old access hatch and replaced it in the hole. I filled the space with some more of the mixture described above thicken to a mayonnaise consistency. This was spread into the void and filled in from behind to reconstruct a solid basis of the replacement hatch. I think the end result is pretty good for my first try! This is 2 pictures of when it was just removed before cleaning or sanding. The deck section is much more still and solid then before.

obviously there is a small void which I will have to fill and as mention it isn't cleaned up yet but I'm pretty happy with the results for my first try.

here's that same section shown above after the repair



If anyone sees where I may have screwed up significantly please let me know. I plan on sanding it down and shaping it and then eventually gel coating it with the rest of the top deck. With proper preparation west systems is confident that the gel coat with have no problem bonding to the epoxy repair.

I have also been respraying the other hull with gel coat using a earlux 5000 pro hvlp spray system. First attempt was a little rough but its a hell of a spray system for the money.

Oh and I tried the coin tap test and didn't notice the change in tone you suggested might imply delimitation or damage.

Thanks for the advice sm

Just a note, your patch looks really good, I am concerned about filling large voids with epoxy. Epoxy does not give and tends to crack very easily when stressed. My rule of thumb is to just use enough epoxy to saturate the glass and remove the excess. I might have laid some glass around the area in a rough shape before "injection moulding" the port seat. Good idea though. Looks nice.

_________________
Why did I sell my 16?

Here is the epoxy repair cleaned up a little. With the shrinking and the sanding I think that 2 or 3 coats of gel coat will still allow ample room for the hatch and silicon to keep it in place. I'm also going to use SS bolts with washers instead of the crap screws that were used before.



Here is the other hull prepped for gel coat. This hull will be painted black with a white design over and then clear coated.


And here is the hull that has had 3 coats of gel coat applied. Going to work on the graphics next and then finish with 3 coats of clear coat on the bottom and 4 coats of white gel coat on the top with no clear coat.

I had the same concern after I was done with the repair and thought about it a bit more. I assumed a little flex is probably a good thing and this is pretty rigid.

Oh well! Lesson learned. To be honest I was probably a little intimidated by the glass as I hadn't even used epoxy before this. We'll see how it holds up. It if ends up cracking I guess I'll jump in and do some more extensive repair.

Thanks for the heads up!

Hi Reefing....
Your spongy ness on the inside of both hulls, is almost certainly delamination. I am a bit confused as to what stage of refinishing of the hulls you are in, but for sure, fix the delamination before proceeding to pretty up the rest of the boat. There is ample information on the hobie 16 forum on how to repair delamination, but it is basicly just filling in the hollow voids in the sides of the hulls with epoxy. I use the West System products, and has worked wonderfully.
Depending on how much flex you have in the sides of the hulls, you could seriously damage the boat under severe winds and stress, if you dont repair it properly.
Good luck

Nice work on the port. I've installed one before and would advise that SS bolts are overkill. You've got it in such good shape that some sealant and countersunk nylon screws will do the trick. With nylon, it's almost impossible to overtighten. Overtightening on that uneven deck surface will warp the ring such that the cap no longer fits.

Again...nice work!

_________________
Jerome Vaughan
Hobie 16