Post
by Renegadenemo » Fri Feb 16, 2018 1:08 am
Good questions and the answer is that we're rolling many cheats into one with the intakes.
The 66 version imploded and had to be rebuilt so it was paint-stripped, strengthened with much added material and epoxy glue then painted with a very thin coat of cellulose paint atop a chromate wash-coat to etch the aluminium.
Now look at the pic's of the boat with this repaired structure returned to service and it's a totally different shade of blue - except it isn't. That is, unless someone popped to the bottom of the lake in the 34 years it was down there and repainted it the right colour. So what is going on?
After a huge, and I mean huge, amount of research, arguing, analysing the colour properly with gadgets and procuring the colour in all sorts of paint from that which you'd use on your bedroom ceiling to ordinary coach enamel we finally arrived at the conclusion (finally pointed to by a forum for those who 'detail' their cars (clean them stupidly because they mustn't have a life)) that the only difference between the darker coloured intakes, post-repair, and the lighter appearing remainder of the craft is the degree of polish.
The physics says that the reason we see blue intakes at all is because the paint absorbs all the red, green, yellow and everything else and only reflects blue so that's what you see. But polish it to death and it will reflect an amount of blue too so what you get is a darker blue. In theory, keep going with the polish and you'll get black because all the blue will bounce off too.
Now apply that to our boat - the 34 years under water simply took the shine off - voila!
So - in the interests of looking after our work until the end of time we applied the chromate wash-coat and then a polyester powder coat inside and out before fitting the panel so that'll look after it's longevity - but it was bright green and that might show through any top coat so we put a single coat of high-build over it. One coat won't lose the rivet lines but it gave us enough to flat it back through 180 grit to 320, then 500 and finally 1000 so the substrate would take a coat of blue that will polish, glaze and wax so that light will simply tumble into it never to be seen again.
I'm only a plumber from Cannock...
"As to reward, my profession is its own reward;" Sherlock Holmes.
I have wrought my simple plan
If I give one hour of joy
To the boy who’s half a man,
Or the man who’s half a boy.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.