Another lesson learned - again!

Last winter we had an aluminium board made up to replace our wooden blue board (for signalling other barges). It was powder coated a lovely shiny white as a base coat and then I had to paint the centre blue. I didn’t want to sand down the expensive powder coating so convinced myself and Lorna that it would be fine as a primer for the blue paint.

All went well and it had a beautiful smooth blue finish, then I tried to pull off the masking tape that marked the edge of the blue square. I couldn’t peel off the tape without pulling swathes of blue paint off at the same time. Aaghhh, I set to to peel the whole lot off using packing tape to help get a purchase. It took 2 days to put on and 4 hours to take off to pristine white again, all for a moment of laziness. Lesson learned - again!

The blue board looked just as good the second time around though so now I just have to fit hinges and the light so it can mount on the roof.

We also had navigation light boxes made in 3mm aluminium and powder coated matt black. We used google sketchup to draw the light box in 3D and gave these drawings to the specialist work shop. The free program was brilliant for this but took some time to learn. The light boxes are fitted, look great and should be low maintenance.