I finally got to the painting stage when temperatures started to drop below 60F here in the NE. I rented an indirect diesel heater to get the uninsulated garage to where it needed to be and ran it for more than a week while I painted the hull. Lots of lessons learned! I used TotalBoat Wet Edge and Primer - trying to spray it with decent HVLP gear and lots of tweaking. I eventually gave up and switched to rolling and tipping, hoping to get something smoother with no luck. I went back to spraying for the final couple of coats and still have a finish on the hull that in no way reflects the huge amount of time I spent fairing and prepping it. Uggh! The deck looks decent thanks to the flat non-skid paint. I went with TotalBoat because some YouTube channels that I have faithfully followed for years promoted it. After seeing the results, I dug deeper and saw the reviews are actually pretty poor. I'm going to move on and wait until it gets scratched up a bit, then redo the hull with AlexSeal or Awlgrip, for (hopefully) a more durable, attractive finish. I've always hated painting and now I hate it more! But, overall, I'm pretty happy with the quality of the build. I finally had to figure out the proper balance between trying to reach a "perfect" product with actually getting out on the water in my lifetime! It's been just about a year since I ordered the plans and started building the Amas in the basement in the winter. Launch is scheduled for Thanksgiving when the family is home to share in the event and fish me out of the drink if things go awry! lol
