I have a 12 foot mirro craft that I am modifying into a bass boat. One of the users on this site, Crappie Slayer did a similar modification on his boat and I used quite a few of his ideas to do mine, just wanted to clarify that so I don't get the full credit. I started from scratch, completely tore out the inside of the boat, flipped it and started the sanding process.

The previous owners had around 12 coats of white oil based house paint on this boat and I did not have a super strong power tool to get it all off. I picked up a couple of cans of "Aircraft stripper" and what I did was use a paint brush, wipe it on pretty thick and I cut garbage bags and laid it over the stripper and left it on over night. This dug through the layers pretty fast. After that I used my power drill with a steel brush wheel attachment to bring it down back to the original aluminum, I used an aluminum bondo to fill in any gouges or nics in the boats surface, then I sanded that down once it was dry.

Looking Good and welcome to the mirrocraft club!!! Don’t say anything but we are going to take over this site with the leadership of Capt Ahab. Like I said it is a secret so don't say anything about the club.

What he said. Welcome

After is was brought back down to the original aluminum, I washed it down with a degreaser and scrubbed it good. then I made a makeshift paint room in my garage. I do not own a paint sprayer so I decided to use spray cans of (self-etching primer) for the first coats. I sprayed on two coats of this. The self-etching primer is nice because it fills in all of the nics you missed and buff marks from the power drill and it makes a nice and smooth and even coat. After the first coat dried I went over it with a fine sanding block and took off any imperfections or raised spots.

Thanks guys, I am a new boat owner, and not a carpenter by any means so don't be to critical of my crappy workmanship..lol...This is my first boat overhaul, I've researched and read a ton of information to at least make sure it's done right, may be crooked but it'll be right

Your doing a great job keep the updates coming.

Thank you fool4fish, and here are some more pictures up to date, I have been working on this for around two months solid, took pictures as I was going and now I am posting them, I've only gotten up to framing the inside so far, here are the up to date pics. Please feel free to give me constructive criticism as I definitely need it

Paint looks great I like the color blue on a boat

After the first coat dried I went over it with a sanding block (fine grit) this took off any runs, or raised pieces, imperfections etc.. I didn't sand the rivets as that would take the paint all the way off of them or the seams same reason. Then I went over the sanded paint with acetone and a tack cloth. You can pick up three tack cloths from Home Depot for like $4 bucks. It is basically a wax cloth that will pick up ANYTHING that is left behind, dust, debri, fuzzies, etc...

The paint job looks good, I will be painting mine a lighter blue, its is by awlcraft, medeterian blue with metal flake......I cant wait til i can finally paint my outside. Great job.

thanks bigwave, yeah it's been a process but well worth the time spent! I just can't wait until the framing is done and the carpet put on then some fishing hopefully before winter haha

And the framing starts. I screwed the floor down to the frame using the galvanized deck screws. The plywood I used is the 1/2, I did some research and the 1/2 inch is actually stronger per square foot than the 3/4 inch due to the fact that it can flex in different spots compared to the 3/4 in. only flexing at certain points. Not to mention the 1/2 in. will take a lot more weight off of the total in the boat when everything is said and done. After nailing down the plywood you will notice that the metal mounts where the bench seat was screwed into, I removed the back four. I was going to use them for part of the supports but instead I decided to cut a piece of 2x2, drilled holes through it and then I screwed a piece of 2x2 on the top and bottom of that support. I also used gorilla wood glue and clamps for the three pieces to make sure they were nice and secured.

Great job on the paint. And welcome to the club. F4f or big will show you the seceret hand shake
ill be doing mine in a blue called largo blue from interlux .at least that's the plan for now

Thanks flajsh,

yeah I was going to try and find different paint colors but I liked this one and I figure it'll be easy to touch up if I do get a nick in it, but there are three solid layers of paint and three in between layers of self-etching primer, I'm pretty sure this paint won't be coming off easy.