painted hulls

[Elizabeth Ann]

John,

If you decide to go the 'Oh by the way' route - just remember to bring beer.

Cheers!

[Parker]

I’d think you would want to haul your boat for a few reasons:

1. access to a abundance of fresh water to rinse the hull between the oxidation removal, Poli Prep, and the application of the Poli Glow coats
2. you probably don’t want the oxidation remover and the Poli Prep to go directly into a body of water. The Poli-Ox is an acid. BTW - I’ve never been accused of being a tree hugger.
3. based on my experience, it will take you more that a couple of hours to do this start to finish – probably closer to 8 depending on how much oxidation you have is.

If you’re planning on using a scrub pad provided by the company to remove the oxidation – a white one I believe, save yourself (not to mention your rotator cuff) a lot of time and effort by trying a more aggressive pad (red or green Scotch-brite) picked up at a local hardware store. Try whichever pad(s) you have on a small area of your hull to determine which works best for you.

The company has a hotline you can call if something doesn’t seem to be going correctly.

I honestly figured I was spending 5K for a paint job before trying this. My boat looks great now. Let’s see how long it lasts.

[jcollins]

John,

If you decide to go the 'Oh by the way' route - just remember to bring beer.

Cheers!

Ha! Your right!

[jcollins]

I’d think you would want to haul your boat for a few reasons:

1. access to a abundance of fresh water to rinse the hull between the oxidation removal, Poli Prep, and the application of the Poli Glow coats
2. you probably don’t want the oxidation remover and the Poli Prep to go directly into a body of water. The Poli-Ox is an acid. BTW - I’ve never been accused of being a tree hugger.
3. based on my experience, it will take you more that a couple of hours to do this start to finish – probably closer to 8 depending on how much oxidation you have is.

If you’re planning on using a scrub pad provided by the company to remove the oxidation – a white one I believe, save yourself (not to mention your rotator cuff) a lot of time and effort by trying a more aggressive pad (red or green Scotch-brite) picked up at a local hardware store. Try whichever pad(s) you have on a small area of your hull to determine which works best for you.

The company has a hotline you can call if something doesn’t seem to be going correctly.

I honestly figured I was spending 5K for a paint job before trying this. My boat looks great now. Let’s see how long it lasts.

Parker,
I gave it some thought over the weekend and I do agree. I'll probably do a Friday afternoon - Monday morning haul. But as Brian reminded me, I'll still bring the beer.

[Albinflorida]

I don't have much experience with Poli Glow myself, but I do have 2 clients whom applied the producet to theit boats, not Albins, and were not satisfied. Maybe it was the application or something, but they decided to remove it and that is when the big problems started. One client spent over 2K,(38 ft boat), having it removed. The remover from Poli Glow was ineffective. Muscle was the only thing that did the job, so be carefull. Maybe it is the sun here in Florida, but the product is not well received.

[jcollins]

Thanks for that note!
Anyone else out there have opinions BEFORE I start this project?

[Elizabeth Ann]

John,

I did a quick google on poli glow. Here is some stuff that I found. Read through it, most people are happy. They only caution that it may be a nightmare to switch products days, weeks, months, years, later. Which makes me wonder what happens if/when the company goes under?

If you do a search you'll find much more.

Cheers,

Brian


http://www.geocities.com/bill_dietrich/ ... nance.html

http://www.myboatstore.com/poliglow_faq.htm

http://morgan38.org/discus/messages/1/1 ... 1076084380

[Elizabeth Ann]

More on Poli-glow:

http://www.thehulltruth.com/forums/thre ... =1#M972616

There's a pic of an Albin in this one!
http://www.thehulltruth.com/forums/thre ... =1#M907115

[jcollins]

Here are some interesting thoughts from Jerry Amos. He's a friend of albinflorida.

John Collins,

I am very happy that Doug Jenkins gave you my e-mail address before you started to apply Poly Glo. I have a 37 foot Carver. Two years ago I researched how to make my 1992 Carver look better. I had fallen behind and regular professional buffing and polish. Fiberglass is difficult to bring back to its original Luster. Looking at all the ads on the Internet I thought I would give Polly Glo a try. They tell you that they have a remover and if your unhappy it is easily removed. It is actually extreemly difficult to remove.

Depending on how careful you are on applying their product it will make your old fiberglass look quite nice. It is quite expensive and time-consuming to apply it properly. I did it the most expensive way possible with a professional who first thoroughly scoured the intire boat. I was really pleased with the result for the first nine months. As I started to see deterioration they recommend you recoat. Recoateing doesn't give the same results. Fortunately I didn't recoat with more Poly Glo.. At this point I decided maybe I would be better off removing Polly Glow because certain parts of the boat started to look tacky and waxing or polishing will not work over this product. I have a nephew who is captain of a 67 foot sailboat and who does a lot of boat maintenance and restoration. I told him about applying Poly Glo to my boat. He almost had a stroke telling me that he had customers who had used it and contracted him to remove it. He said the only way he could remove it was to completely wet sand the entire boat, and then began a process of using various grades of wet sandpaper and buffing compounds. Removing is extremely difficult and expensive.

After talking to everyone I could as to the removal method I found a combination of chemicals which will do it, but with grueling work. Poly Glo tells you they have a removal compound, but it just does not work by itself. I spent hours upon hours working with their removal compound and getting nowhere. As Poly Glo deteriorates the fiberglass looks really awful. You have then the choice to remove it or put more over the old coat. That is a real horror story. If you apply in new coat you seal in what is already there and add more to the removal process sometime down the road..

I should patent the removal method. I have heard so many horror stories from people who used Poly Glo then faced the reality of undoing it. The process of getting this stuff off my boat was three times the cost and time of putting it there.

Compound and buff, or if the boat is really getting bad, you are much better to bite the bullet and Imron or something similar. I would be happy to talk to you if you have further questions.

[Tuxedo]

If it's not too late to chime in -

I used Poli Glo on the hull two and a half years ago. Below is the after picture. Before it was heavily oxidized and dull gray. I did spend some time (or actually some $$$) having the boat sanded down with 600 and then 1000 grit sandpaper before doing the Poli Glo, then did the Poli prep, then 6 coats of Poli Glo. Had I not sanded, I would have had a shiny, oxidized hull.

I’ve put a couple of coats on every 9 months or so, and it’s looked good up to now. The Poli Glo people said after a couple of years and a couple of overcoats, it’s time to remove it all and start over. That’s where I am now, and I think I’ll have it painted this summer.

What I wanted was something to delay the inevitable paint job by a couple of years, and that’s exactly what I got.

I also used Poli Glo on the gunnels, but it turned a little yellowish, so I took it off. No problem to remove.

So, the bottom line is, I’d recommend Poli Glo as a good short term fix for dark hulls, not for white, but don’t expect it to last forever.

[jcollins]

Tom,
I think you hit the nail on the head. If we want 2-3 years to save up for that paint job, this is the product.

Everyone here has seen my before pics. When I do apply it, I'll post the after pics.

[Parker]

Update – 4 years later

Each April for the past three years, I have washed my hull with soap and water and applied an additional three coats of Poli Glow to maintain the finish. The boat has been in saltwater from mid-May to late October each year in Massachusetts.

This spring I decided to strip all PG, scrub the hull to remove a little bit of oxidation, and reapply 6 or so coats of Poli Glow again. I took extra care with the oxidation removal step this time. Even spent some time carefully working out deeper scuffs/scratches with 320 grit sandpaper.

All told I put in 6-8 hours and spent another $75 in supplies. The oxidation removal and making sure the hull was uniformly dark green was the most labor-intensive step (think: 2-3 hours of old school Karate Kid wax-on-wax-off action). I should have either used more aggressive scrub pads or at least started out with new ones. My bad.

I’m very pleased with the results overall. I’ll admit that a freshly painted hull looks a better up close but you can’t tell the difference from 5 yards and I could certainly shave in my reflection.

[jcollins]

Parker,
Thanks for the update. That is good news for those that are thinking about this product. You probably read in my other posts that I ended up not using Poly-Glo. I did wet sand and follow the traditional route of waxing every few months. To date, the boat is not showing any oxidation and still looks good.

John

[craw_daddy]

Another intermediate step prior to Awlgrip is to wet sand the oxidized hull. Albins have a very thick gelcoat layer & take well to light wet-sanding. I did mine followed by collinite waxing & it looked as good as new.

--Dave

[DougSea]

If you want some idea of how it will look just wet it down. The Poli-Glow is really just an overcoating. As I think they say in their instructions "If your hull has dirt on it it will now have shiny dirt"!

I love the stuff and as someone here said, from up close a good paint job is nicer but from any practical distance the poliglow looks great.