I have painted my Marinette with Interlux Paint. It does not hold up as well as I would like. I was told by a boater that aluminum will not hold paint well for long. a friend of mine and a previous Marinette owner told me that Marinette had the best paint he had ever seen, it lasted for many years. Does anybody know what paint the used or maybe mixed to make it hold. would Pluckebaum know since he builds quality aluminun boats? what does anybody think? I may try to contacy yhem and see.

Volney

I read or was told Marinette used a vinyl based paint. Everyone knows what happens to vinyl after cooking in the sun year after year. I think the idea was the paint would "give" with the Aluminum and the satin finish would hide the weld and bend marks etc. Needless to say, the paint didn't hold up very well.

The key to proper paint is prep as mentioned in previous post.
Prep is 90% of the work, imo.

I've had Imron on the boat since 2001 or 02 and its held very well except for some areas where it has reacted to the fairing compound. And that goes back to prep.

-Karl

I am painting a boat with the original finish. It was full of cracks and pinholes. The guy helping me said that he was painting cars in the late eighties and a lot of them had similar problems and had to be redone. I sanded the boat a lot. I used an orbital sander and started with 80 grit. When you hit the reddish brown coat the pinholes disappear but you will soon break through to bare aluminum in spots. You will also hit fairing. Some is fairly solid. Some is rotten and has to be replaced. When I got to hard paint I stopped sanding. You could still put down tape and pull up more pinhole dots but I was not prepared to go all the way to bare aluminum. I found by accident that wiping on and wiping off toluene will soften the old topcoat but I don't know if this really helps after the old paint hardens again.

Add a etching primer kit to your sanding kit. When you break through to bare aluminum tack it and spray it then and there. I used a Preval spray bottle and the etching primer that came with my paint. Later I switched to a canned self etching primer because it was more convenient. I couldn’t shake up the Preval sprayer after the paint settles out. You have to unscrew the top sprayer and put on the bottle cap to shake it up. I kept losing the bottle cap. Cut a few different shaped holes in a piece of card board to spray a soft edge through.

With my system the etching primer and the regular primer were the same paint. Some areas were just spot primed and others were painted completely. All seem to be holding up.

sherwin williams jet glo !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the only way to go