How To Touch Up and Make Your Narrowboat Beautiful Again

As the market leaders in canal boat painting, we often get asked about the best method for touching up paintwork. Unfortunately it is difficult to completely remove scratching as new paint can often stand out compared to weathered paint, but there are techniques of hiding any scuffs and scratches with a repaint. We have teamed up with Adrian from Canal Photography to talk you through the process. The shell of his boat was painted in 2011 when new and still continues to shine to this day.

“As with any Narrowboat (especially when you live aboard) maintenance is essential,” Adrian advises. “There will always be the inevitable bump with a lock or scrape down a lock landing, so every now and then we have to touch up our paintwork. Of course we use Symphony Paints to do this”.

“Quality just shines through time and time again”

No Bare Metal

If there is no bare metal showing, you can simply touch up with the same colour of standard topcoat gloss that was originally used using a high quality bristle brush (we recommend Purdy Monarch Elite) and our handy 1 litre topcoats. Due to the depth of colour pigments in our paints Adrian notes that after a really good polish it is very difficult to tell where the touch up has been done. “Quality just shines through time and time again, the depth of colour astounds us every time!” explains Adrian. For polishing we recommend Farecla G3W106 Wax Premium Liquid Protection, it can easily be applied by cloth and buffed into the panels with a dry polishing cloth.

Please note you should never cut and polish; this just removes the gloss from the paint and reduces the paint’s longevity in the sun.

Bare Metal

If it has gone to bare metal then please follow the standard route of priming the area (however small) and apply undercoat and topcoat as normal. In extreme cases where bare metal has been exposed, any rust will need to be removed by sanding and wire brush. The metal will then need to be treated with a rust converter (we recommend HMG Ferrozinc) and applied before the primer to hold back the rust. It is important to note that Ferrozinc or any rust converter you may choose to use is not a substitute for shotblasting or grinding away the rust and is merely a holding product - eventually the metal will need to be brought back to bare.

“The easiest paint system on the market - from order to delivery to using the product.”

Adrian swears by the Symphony Narrowboat Paint system and would never look at using any other product range. “The paint is such good quality and simple to use, you can keep a wet edge with no problems at all. We have brushed and rolled it on in the past, either way the finish is always super shiny and durable. By far the easiest paint system on the market - from order and delivery to using the product”. You should now be equipped with the knowledge of touching up your boat. As you can see it is a relatively straightforward process and can be done by yourself without the need for a professional, so go and make your boat shine!