Stuck in a Loop

Except for the Port Joslin Rendezvous, the Santa Cruz 27 rigging and sailing, a house guest, working on a kitchen cabinet project, a little tennis here and there, and spending weekend time with Susan, I've been working on the interior cabin side every day. Some days 7 hours, some days 3. So far 6 coats of 3-part primer and 4 1/2 coats of single-part Interlux Brightside finish, with sanding between coats. But I don't seem to be getting anywhere. It IS getting very smooth but you can still see through to the bondo in spots. I must be just about sanding off each coat after I apply it. If I don't, though, the finish is pretty rough. Still, this is not resource-efficient.

Yesterday I determined to stop this craziness and apply the final gloss coat of Brightside and call it good enough. Such high hopes. It started out perfectly but within ten minutes the new roller, which said "designed for all paints", started shedding fibers into the finish. I kept going thinking it would clear up but it just got worse. The only thing was to give up and return the rollers to West Marine. I got some different ones from KKMI boatyard. The workers there have to use what's in the store so those must work. Right? Now I have to sand that coat back off and start again.

The good news is that I'm getting a lot of practice with rolling and tipping and learning the good techniques and finding the lowest cost, high quality tipping brushes (and hopefully now the right rollers). One of the limitations that stretches out the project is that, if the temperature in the cabin gets a little too warm, blending the tipped sections gets difficult or impossible. I get highly visible vertical seams. The other realization I'm coming to is that 3-part paint is really the only thing that's tough enough for boat finishes, even on the inside.

Yesterday after the roller fiber fiasco, I finished the sanding on the exterior cabin trunk in anticipation that I will someday complete the interior (I'm just talking about the cabin side here) and start painting the outside. At this rate, I'll be lucky to get the new ports installed before the Christmas rains.