Planning to remove the bottom paint from my 18-foot flats boat. Paint is a couple layers thick Interlux ablative. Was going to try oven cleaner and pressure washer first, but if that does not work has anyone ever any of the Back to Nature products? Aqua Strip or Ready Strip? They are cheaper than the Interlux brand of stripper, just not sure how well they work?
Oven cleaner works great, but it is fairly expensive and any wind at all will waste it as well as eat you up.
The active ingredient in oven cleaner is lye.
When I came across discussion on another board about the active ingredient in the “peel-away” product, which works extremely well on bottom paint, being lye. I decided to try some homemade lye gravy.
Lye is in the drain cleaner section of Ace. It is an ingredient they watch over closely because of meth heads using it. So be aware of that if you’re going after a big quantity of it and they look at you funny or ask for ID, etc. There aren’t laws against purchasing lots of it as there are with allergy meds, but just be aware of that issue when you walk in to buy it. It’s very cheap.
Mix cold water with a small amount of corn starch then add the lye very slowly in small amounts. With only a small amount, the mixture will be very clumpy like gravy. Wear full body and face chemical protection and clob this mixture onto the bottom of the boat. Cover it with wax paper and squeegy out any air. Let this work on the paint for a few hours. You will figure out the timing you need to have after a few attempts. You want the paint to peel away on the paper when you pull it off. If you let it sit too long, the paper will tear easily and not pull off the sort of dried paint/lye mixture. This means you’ll have to scrape, which you don’t want to do. If you don’t let it sit long enough, on the other hand, it obviously won’t work as good. Between applications, I pressure washed. I did all this on top of a slab, and when I was done I could sweep up the chips of paint and residue. Lye is used to sweeten soil. I will lower the PH of the soil where you’re working with it despite you neautralizing it all with lots of water as you power wash. You can avoid this effect by peeling it and scraping residue with a plastic scraper before powerwashing, but this obviously will increase time spent.
I worked on my 21 Mako for probably 4 or 5 solid work days. 2 of those days were tryi