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Construction
After the metal work is completed, the hull is sandblasted to white metal inside and out. It's imperative to address both the inside and outside of a steel boat, as they corrode from the inside (where you can't see it), not the outside. The key to a long-lived, trouble-free steel vessel is attention to details such as these. The outside of the hull above the waterline is flame-sprayed with molten zinc immediately following sandblasting. RED's hull is, in effect, galvanized. This isn't cheap but it means that if you chip the paint, it's not going to rust. It's well worth it. We were sold on this process after we saw a rather beat-up home-built sailboat in Tasmania that was missing most of the paint on one side. There was no rust, and I went over to ask the owner about it. It was flame-sprayed with zinc, and had been missing paint in some areas for years where it had chafed off while tied to a piling berth. It convinced us. Waterline had been doing this for years. We also had the bilge and the interior of the lazarette flame-sprayed. The interior of the hull is sprayed with zinc-rich epoxy, then a worker is sent in with a sash brush to hand-paint behind the frames to be certain that the entire interior has a good coat of paint. Following this, the interior is sprayed with Devoe 235 coal-tar epoxy. |
