Today was one of those days. I got an education in paint and still have a lot more I want to learn. But I am getting ahead of myself.

I wanted the hull was  painted black and for course it is easy to find black paint.  I flipped the boat over on a set of saw horses, grabbed my HVLP spray gun and started spraying.

No real problems but I hate black and wonder why I use it every time! Always hard not to have some flaws in it. It shows EVERY flaw.

I also picked out a green yesterday when I picked up the black paint, but once I saw it on the fabric I hated it. I wanted a bright green, something like this and what I had was not even close. So I headed back  to the paint store, actually two paint stores because I did not like the answer I got from the first one. I got educated on paint.

Usually I use an oil based porch and deck enamel. It’s reasonably priced and you can buy it at most any home building supply and of course it works well on the boats. If I want a special color they mix it for.

This time it seems I chose a color that people don’t use on their houses. 🙂 No one could mix anything anywhere close to this color. Even if they could they said it would probably fade out really quick. The problem is the base color paint they start with. I can’t explain it but I did grasp what they were saying and that they just couldn’t get to where I wanted with house paints.

Both places suggested I go to the automotive paint supply and they could mix any color I wanted.  But I don’t much about automotive paints and they are expensive too!  Before I walked in I wanted to educate myself a little bit about what it available. For now I wanted to stick to something I knew. Time to pick another color but what? I already had the black on the bottom.

To keep this short I picked up a quart of Hunter Green and I  knew I had two more quarts in the shop. I painted some scraps, placed them on the boat and stared at them for while. None of them impressed me honestly, but I had to make a choice.

I narrowed it down the Hunter Green and the Almond. I decided to use the green, at least it was green as I had planned. But I kept going back and forth…… I couldn’t make up my mind.

The almond won out.

It doesn’t look that good in the photo but I am impressed and almost glad I couldn’t get my green I wanted.  I expect to get two coats on tomorrow and then I can take the tape off and see what it really looks like. If all goes well, should launch it this weekend.