Finishing fiberglass overhead

[zachduckworth]

Hi everyone,
I have a 1984 Islander Bahama 30. A zipper on the headliner recently broke around the same time I was considering re-doing the deck hardware to allow me to set up a spinnaker (the boat had limited deck hardware at stock). This combined to cause me to cut out the 37 year old headliner.

The fiberglass overhead behind the headliner is unfinished. Due to the quality of build and care prior owners gave it there was no evidence of any of the deck hardware every having leaked. There is a lot of dark purple glue that held the foam of the headliner in place.

I was originally thinking of putting up shiplap panels but after doing that in the head I decided to simply paint the cabin overhead. I want the job to look nice though to match the excellent built quality of everything else in the cabin. Islander Bahama 30s have an incredible amount of teak in them.

My thought is to put Total Fair fairing compound on the overhead and then fair it and finally paint it. I think this would be easier than trying to sand the production fiberglass smooth before painting.

I have a price quote of $2000 for a workmanlike sanding and painting. I wonder if it is a good deal to simply pay two boat bucks to have someone to this job for me, or else take it on myself.

The first task will be to remove the glue residue. I saw a kid on youtube who used a spray bottle of isopropyl alcohol to remove the glue. He used a plastic brush after letting it soak for a few second and that worked for him. I tried a drill with a steel brush and no alcohol and that gave very poor results. I am thinking about drill + alcohol this coming weekend.

As far as fair it goes, I am debating how awful it might be. Obviously it needs to be faired well or it will look really lousy. I've faired over areas of my boat but never such a large overhead area. Is that basically asking for trouble? Would I be better off doing a bunch of thin coats of pure epoxy or some sort of mix (maybe with a bit of colloidal silica) to make the fiberglass reasonable smooth, and then paint it?

I'd really like to save myself the $2000 if I can. I mean, I could pay it, but I don't want to and I don't mind work. My only concern is that fairing it will turn into a nightmare.

Any advice from anyone who has done this will be very much appreciated!

[Bill O]

Not sure of your location, but do not underestimate the insulating properties of a headliner. If you have head room, would add a some insulation to the cabin top.

If you are in the tropics, heat penetration on a sunny hot day will make the cabin temps soar and in more temperate areas if you need to run heat you will have loss through the cabin top.

IMO $2K to paint a 30' cabin top seems high and you could do it much cheaper if that is the way you would want to go. Also you can learn by the experience of doing it yourself.


Edit: there was a recent headliner CF discussing different options.

[Benz]

Two boat bucks is dirt cheap for that--take the plunge before the price goes up!
I'm fairing my topsides right now, and have spent more than that on Awlfair, primer, sandpaper, without factoring in my labor.
Unless you hate yourself, working overhead is misery, and unless you're a professional, it'll take you twice the time and material to get it half as good.

[Bill O]

Here is the link to the previous CF thread w/some good ideas for a headliner replacement. https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...al-274082.html

[JBP]

I think fairing is the easy part of the job. Removing that old adhesive is hideous. As you said, it's either a wire brush or noxious chemicals. I never had much luck with alcohol, though I tried ethyl not isopropyl. I had to advance to acetone or Total Boat surface prep, which are serious fumes and flammable. A wire brush on a drill is what I used most, but this generates plumes of dust with glass fibers. I made myself a custom cowling for my drill to attach to a shop vac. I found that fine wire brushes do less damage to the underlying glass.

Total Fair IS an epoxy mix with filler added. It's somewhat softer than straight colloidal silica, but harder than straight microballons. I've done some with straight microballoons (not upside down) and it worked fine but the mix can be drippy without some silica. It takes more time to mix up than Total Fair but sands very easily. I wouldn't do straight silica, sanding it back would be too hard.

[sailingunity]

I used a wire brush like this one to get the glue off my headliner and it worked great - much better than acetone.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Avanti-P...D01G/202831066

Considering how much you'll need in terms of time and materials, $2k doesn't seem bad to me.

[s/v Jedi]

I recommend you try a heat gun and scraper like this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0001IX7RY

I just did some testing after removing vinyl that was glued to a bulkhead, leaving glue and fuzzy backing etc.

After removing the worst with the heat gun and scraper, paint it with TotalProtect or InterProtect and let cure (=epoxy). Now you can sand it quick and easy.

Of course I don’t had the purple glue you have but this may work for you

[Bill O]

Originally Posted by sailingunity

I used a wire brush like this one to get the glue off my headliner and it worked great - much better than acetone.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Avanti-P...D01G/202831066

Considering how much you'll need in terms of time and materials, $2k doesn't seem bad to me.

What did you eventually do for your headliner?

[s/v Jedi]

If the quoted cost sounds cheap, they will not do a good job.

[zachduckworth]

I meant by epoxy mix doing my own mix with silica but having sanded it before I know how awful it would be to do overhead.
I didn’t know about Total Protect. That is a cool product. It’s nice that it’s sandable. Maybe total fair plus that, plus paint will be how I go.
The purple glue does come off with a wire bush alone but it takes off some glass too and is just a lot of itchy work. I’m hoping isopropyl works; the kid who did the youtube vid had a lot of luck with it. We’ll see. I’ll post about the project as I get moving on it. Probzbly have pics on Sunday.

[JeffBurright]

FWIW, for my Islander I decided to try kiwigrip on my overhead and made a textured surface to work with the unfinished glass rather than try to sand and fair the whole thing. If I'd had more time I would have removed the hardware nuts and washers instead of paint over them, but I decided it wasn't worth the time and complication and I can always do it later. Total cost was just a couple hundred bucks for a gallon of kiwigrip and consumables. IIRC, I used an alcohol swipe with a sharp scraper to get most of the glue, but perfection wasn't necessary with the kiwi coating. I found the biggest pain to be removing all the staples from the old vinyl headliner.

Certainly not everyone's cup of tea, but I like it for my purposes.

I do wonder about the real value of a thin insulation layer. Does anyone know of good studies on this question? We just had outdoor carpet in the ceiling of our last boat, cruising the PNW and the tropics, and can't say I felt the lack of R-value.

[sailingunity]

Originally Posted by Bill O

What did you eventually do for your headliner?

Nothing yet, but I think I've landed on formica bonded to 5mm ply.

[wholybee]

Fairing it and getting it to look good will be a nightmare, and I doubt anyone can do a good job for $2000. After a rough fairing, it will need to be spraypainted with a very light coat of contrasting color, then block sanded to reveal low spots. Then faired again, then repeated until there are no high or low spots. Failure to do this will result in visible waves in the surface and not look very good.

It is much cheaper and easier to make a headliner of some sort, plywood backed vinyl, formica, or whatever. It will look better, be serviceable if you need to take it down for maintenance of deck hardware, and provide some insulation of heat and noise.

[zachduckworth]

Update:
With a moderate-to-hard effort but lots of mess and some frustration I was able to get most of the glue off over the weekend. I still have about four hours of work left. The trick has been to use Goof Off spray, Total Boat Surface Pre/Dewaxer (Xylene) or acetone. After hitting a spot with one of these I then use a steel scrubby, the sort they use in restaurants for dishwashing. This combination has worked ok. The glue gets brittle and dry and then can be scrubbed off with the steel. The downside is that I can only do only small areas at a time to keep the fumes from getting out of hand. It's definitely not perfect, and it's not all off, but it is getting close...

Another annoyance: California no longer lets you import 3M adhesive remover, which is annoying. But I assume that it contains Xylene and some other stuff. And I got some Xylene mailed here anyway, so California state government can ---- my ---- in ----.

I'm now in between thinking that I should finish the whole thing myself or just throw in the towel and hire the job out. I know people who hired the guy I have in mind before and they like his work. I've seen a boat he painted the exterior of and it looks ok. I hate the thought of not doing it myself. I removed the wheel from this boat and installed a tiller myself, which should have been way harder than dropping a headliner and painting it. But this just is much more unpleasant that the other one. Anyway, more updates next weekend...

[Mickeyrouse]

I re-painted the ceiling of our boat several years ago. No liner to remove, just sanding old paint off. I did not spray. I rolled with a foam roller and finished by polishing with a 1000 grit polishing pad. It looks molded in. Spray never looked this good. I used Interlux Brightside. Took a couple days.