I'm considering wet sandblasting to remove the antifoul back to gelcoat. Has anyone used a Karcher 5 or 7 to do that?
Thanks

Don't know about the karcher range but antifoul can be removed with a big pressure washer found on most slips, it's can take awhile & is hard yakka hanging on to one of those beasts for more than half an hour or so. Tip turbo nozzle makes little pressure washers much more aggressive, and big machines more so

I would reckon it would depend on how much built up antifouling you are trying to remove .
An industrial wet sand blasting unit using bicarbonate soda took 10 hrs to remove build up on my 10 m hull. I tried wet blasting with a Karcher but it was a waste of time.,,, but in saying that,,now that the hull has a maximum of one coat of antfoul, the wet blasting Karcher may work quite well.

Select to expand quote

sailorsilas said..
I'm considering wet sandblasting to remove the antifoul back to gelcoat. Has anyone used a Karcher 5 or 7 to do that?
Thanks

Why?
you gave a perfectly good barrier there

Why remove perfectly good antifoul?
whenever the boat comes out of the water chunks of antifoul either fall off or are missing. Apart from the last few coats I think it's been on for a long time. Have decided, for various reasons, to take it all off and use Coppercoat. the old stuff came off very easily with the club pressure cleaner (3,000psi I think). Just a bit of sanding on patches that are stubborn which is a relief!

Best of luck. I'm looking forward to a success story!

Select to expand quote

Ramona said..
Best of luck. I'm looking forward to a success story!

Thanks, so am I considering the initial costs!

I used a sand blaster when I changed to coppercoat - worth every cent (I also shaved the bottom and got rid of some osmosis while i was there)

I also finished off with a sand blaster. It took him 2 1/2 hours but to do by sanding it would have taken a week!
well worth the money.