Boat Painting Tape Tips

 11 Sep 22:

We watched Geoff Kerr's Caledonia Yawl build series a few years back, incredibly informative. It was there or in another of his videos that he talked about a few different types of tape that he uses to get different border results when painting. But first a turtle, an Eastern Box turtle named Carolina came by to check out the our fancy new French door.

Most folks are familiar with low stick blue painter's tape, but some brands are more susceptible to edge lifting or paint soak in. 3M Scotch Fine Line 218 tape is ideal for long crisp lines.

ScotchBlue™ Sharp Lines Painter’s Tape 2093 is a multi surface tape that can be left on for longer periods of time, but it does not have the level of sharp line performance as 218. What we do sometimes is use 2093 on the base coats and transition over to 218 for the finish coats. As far as sharp lines go, it's not bad to have lines overlap on base coats, to tie the different coatings together. 

Scotch® 2080 Delicate Surface Painter’s Tape is great for surfaces that require a little extra care such as  freshly painted surfaces (painted at least 24 hours ago).

These different tapes have different temperature ranges and can be left on for different periods of time without lifting the coating beneath. If you're not sure which tape to use you can post a question below, or wander over to the 3M Tape Selection Guide.

Our video: https://youtu.be/vLXnNdn-sxs

We pulled tape and had a few small spots lifted, caused by not letting the base coat dry for 24 hours. The other 31 feet of tape pull came out great!

Video: https://youtu.be/eRz2IHLW4r4

Many thanks to Geoff for sharing his painting materials and methods with the metaverse!

Here's the best video we've found on the paint process, from bare wood to the finish coat. Well worth a membership to Off Center Harbor to take a look at this video and the 42 part series on building a glued plywood lapstrake boat, in this case a Caledonia Yawl.