1970s AMF Sunfish lead paint

Obrien117

New Member
Hi I have a mid 70s AMF Sunfish that some of the blue paint on the bottom is starting to rub off. I am thinking of sanding it and giving it a new coat. Does anyone know if these boats used lead paint or lead in the gelcoat as it was built before 1978.
 
Rather than sand the needed texture on the cockpit floor, consider spray-painting only the worn areas, then spray-painting the entire area with clear. (Sold by almost every spray paint manufacturer).

The difficulty with the above suggestion is matching paint color--you may end up spray-painting the entire cockpit. (Five minutes outdoors with $8-worth of lead-free paint).
 
Gelcoat is a sort of liquid plastic when it is first applied and doesn’t have lead in it. All fiberglass Sunfish came from the factory with gelcoat and no paint. If someone painted your boat in the past, you’d have to ask them what was in the paint.
 
Hi Obrien,

A picture would be helpful so our crowd can guess if the "paint" is paint, oxidized gelcoat or bottom paint. I can't think of a 70s boat that had a blue hull, so probably not gelcoat unless a previous owner tinkered with it.

Whatever it is we'd recommend wearing a 3M mask, N95 at a minimum and cover up skin. Consider a full face mask or DeWalt makes nice goggles called Concealers that fit over eyeglasses.

Concealer Goggles.jpg


Sand outside. A random orbital sander that connects to a shopvac with HEPA filter is optimum. We start with 120 grit pads and work down as low as 60 grit if the coating is stubborn, keeping an eye on how close we are getting to original gelcoat. Change pads frequently.

Shop vac dusty ZIP.jpg


Most boats get painted to cover a plethora of repairs, some get bottom paint if they were kept on a mooring. Hard bottom paint is the most annoying to remove. Here's a 1988 Pearson we had to remove bottom paint from and we saved the gelcoat. I got most way through the removal then Skipper took the boat out for Sea Trials to make sure a chine repair was watertight.

IMG_2970.jpg
 

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