Off to a flying start - partly thanks to WD490

 At last being able to get at the port side roof of Herbie, I've got off to a good start in just over a day.

The first job was to remove the old wooden handrail like we did earlier this year on the starboard side. Because it was to be broken up and disposed of I was able to use brute force and a big screwdriver as a lever. Here it comes

I got the whole handrail off in about half an hour., slowed down by some gert big screws that had secured cleats on top of the rail.

Brute force tool number two, an impact screw driver swung into action and after some hefty coults with a hammer, out they came.  Lots of smaller screws still remained in the steel

Being rusty they snapped off with some pliers and then I cut them off flush with the rail using a cutting disc on my battery powered angle grinder. That made some lovely sparks, which was fun. I resisted having an angle grinder for many years but now I'm a big fan. It makes short work of otherwise onerous tasks.

Swapping the cutting disc for a grinding pad got rid of all the loose crusty flaky rust and got us back to this.  The dark colour you see is some of Herbie's original dark blue paint

By now the roof ( and a lot of me) was covered in brown dust and out came the next super tool, our little Dyson vacuum which got rid of most of it in a couple of minutes. These tools are best friends

It's not just the handrail that needs doing, there are quite a few places on this side of the roof that need work so while I had the angle grinder handy I made a start on them. Here are some, posing with my old bottle of Fertan rust converter which seems to last forever.

While I'm happy to use Fertan on the roof, and it does work,  I'm not going to use it on the handrail because of what happened on the starboard side when a shower of rain spread the residue all over the side of the boat.

It took a lot of elbow grease and cream cleaner to shift, and I was not a happy bunny.

So this time I'm going to rely on Hammerite No 1 Rust Beater primer which dries pretty fast and can be applied directly over non flaky rust. I was a bit concerned about starting with paint this late in the year, but according to the blurb the Hammerite can be painted at anything between 8 and 25 deg C, so Ill do that next week. Then pits will need filling with Isopon filler, which according to their blurb can be applied on top of paint providing the paint is given a coarse sanding first.  It certainly worked well when we did the other side.

Meanwhile my attention turned to another port side job that has been waiting for me to have access.  When we repainted the port cabin side before we moved pontoons eighteen months ago we used some posh masking tape which was supposed to, and did, give a really sharp edge. Well, I won't be using that stuff again because it left a sticky residue where it had been. Our move of pontoons came so suddenly after we had painted that we didn't have time to get rid of the goo, so It has sat until now picking up dust. I wasn't sure how to get it off either, until someone said to try good old WD40 and I'm here to tell you that it did indeed work a treat. Here's before

and after

It still needs a second go here and there but it works.

While I was using the WD40 I had a ghastly thought.  Does it contain silicone? Painters know that new paint wont stick to silicone, no matter how little there is of it and that light grey paint will need to be repainted soon.  In fear, I studied the spray can, and then let out a little cheer

Phew!  Good old WD40.  I also noticed on the can that it says you can use it to remove wax crayon marks, which might be a bit akin to what I was doing.  Here's a free of charge tip of mine for you. If you are sawing wood and it's hard going because the saw is sticking, spray the blade with some WD40 and it'll go much easier.

So after moving to the other side of our pontoon only yesterday morning we've made some good progress.  Another bite out of the elephant.

Saturday Monday and Tuesday are out due to previous engagements but hopefully I'll be a lot further on if I can get back to Herbie later next week.