Painting always gives me grief.

Not because it is so difficult to do, but because the the feeling that the customer is always expecting a flawless finish, perfectly smooth and super shiny. I am moving more and more towards providing a consistently very good paint job and not getting hung on "perfect". I just need to ensure that the client is expecting the same as what I will deliver.

Anyway, back to the boat at hand!

I give the dried filler a basic sanding and then apply the first coat. I sand and paint three coats of paint before I work on the final coats. If all goes well then four coats will be enough. Sometimes I need five. More costs extra.

This canoe will be the traditional Chestnut green. I had a formula worked out for this colour, but the company, ICI, that made the tint base discontinued that paint base, so out the window it goes. I had to start all over. Fortunately the paint company that I go to has an excellent colour service and they came up with an excellent match. The new paint base is from Para. You can see the matched paint chip taped to the end of my sample.

My sample was from an original can of paint from Chestnut, so I can say with absolute certainty that this is the exact colour that Chestnut used.