Let Me tell you about a beautiful thing. My 1981 E33 had about 1/8 inch buildup of bottom paint, it never had been stripped. I have picked away at cleaning it for the 3 years it`s been mine, probably had 30 hours into it. Tried razor knife, sharpened paint scapper, pressure washer, grinder, all that stuff was way to much work, then tried chemical stripper 5f5, ugh never again, bad for my body and for the environment!!! However the bottom is now clean, down to gel coat, took about 25 hours to do the entire 333feet, and about 1/3 of that time was setup. The product you want to use to remove the bottom paint is called SOY STRIP, it`s water soluble, biodegradable, non toxic and easy to use, however, it`s not cheap, less than sandblasting though. I bought mine at West Marine they wanted $111./gallon, I got it for $90/gal with their price match, you can get it online for about $70 plus shipping from Oregon. My boat took 2 gallons. The distributer, a fellow named John Coleman was extremely helpful with questions, his number is online too. I bought a 4inch throw away brush to apply it with, covered the ground under the boat with plastic, applied the stripper, covered it with 2mill plastic, let it cook for 36 hours with outside temp around 50-55 and rainy. With all the rain I had to tent the boat with blue tarps so I could work, thats why the setup took so long. I tried a painters 5 tool to scrap with and ended up using a razor knife to remove the old paint. It wasn`t that bad of job, didnt`t need a respirator
and final cleanup was easy, I rolled up the ground plastic with all the old paint inside and disposed of it per my local requirement.i
and final cleanup was easy, I rolled up the ground plastic with all the old paint inside and disposed of it per my local requirement.i