The Pretty Blue Gun

Stand by, another saga.
Not as long as Iron Phil, but looking back it's close...........
February this year, new found obsession for PSH boards taking hold.
An imaginary prize if you tell me where I got the name from.
Pretty Blue Gun, not PSH..
Don't think I knew at this stage they were extinct.
12' Gun advertised in "Western Victoria"
Seller Rob Dog turned out to be in Torquay.
Basically bought it sight unseen, rarely come up for sale, too busy with work to go down there, sent my mate Drew to pick it up.
Looked the part on his old Landy.



I actually had to flip his photo so it matched my current Gun on the Kombi for my morning blog shot.

No one picked the similarity...
Drew bought it up to Melbourne, I was initially a bit disappointed with the condition.
Described as "Excellent", it had paddle scratches on the top, chips out of the sides under crappy rail tape.


Looking back, it was pretty good for a board of that age.
But it was HEAVY! 15 kg plus.
Very old board, retro fitted handle, custom deck pad, may have belonged to Casso at some point.
I was happy.
Test flat water paddle.

It floated me, which was good enough.
Thought it deserved a new fin, fin buying amateur at this point.




Fin box so big the FCSII fell out of the box.
Board had made it in to the Tent, but Iron Phil was occypying front and centre I think.
At some point I applied heat to get the old rail tape off.


But there it stayed.....
Other projects moved in next door


Chips like this needed repairing.


The poor thing had to sit there watching Iron Phil in the next bed...............
To be continued

Part 2.
FCSII fell out of the box, starting to get the hang of on line fin buying, found a nice Futures with conventional screw that fitted.




But with Iron Phil in the bed next door, the Pretty Blue Gun was being used as a bench most of the time.


Further neglect was added by me buying a TC board, with PSH dna apparently.


Trip to Adelaide to buy another PSH meant further neglect for the Pretty Blue Gun.
May saw my JM 17'6" make it in to the tent for some minor repairs where I opened the garage door in to him.




And this is where things started to go a bit wrong.
Being a clever person, but one who damages his boards a lot, at some point I bought various pigments so could tint filler and repair boards without major repainting of the repair.
So for the repair on Jamie, I would tint white filler grey.



using my black pigment.


Which turned out to be blue - two bottles of dark pigment, one meant to be black, one blue.
Both blue.


So I've got a whole lot of filler that was meant to be grey, but is blue.
I've got a blue board needing filling, but that has barely been washed much less prepared for filling.
Don't want to waste the filler.....
And the blue that was meant to be grey easily covered


Chips on the first side of the Pretty Blue Gun filed


Looks OK there, but It needed paint.
Planning to put RSPro on it, the paint didn't need to be very good, so decided to use spray cans that had previously given bad results.
But just needed to cover the sanding marks under the railsaver.
Masked off the deck, impressed with my ability to mask curves...


Lots of light dustings of paint later - not the primary project so after doing stuff on Iron Phil, just kept applying.


Looking good now, but my whole approach had been haphazard, no preparation, and there was still the other side of the board to deal with.



Still chips and scrapes there, and looks like the old tape is still on.
More filler, deliberately blue this time.



End of June now, to be continued..................

August, abandoned again.
Road trips, fun.
September.....
Geez, not another project jumping the queue (how do you spell that?)



Treehouse board, trying to suntan bits covered by stickers for years.
Pretty Blue Gun at least turned over.


Treehouse masked and UV lamp running 24 / 7


Bloody TC board seems to have jumped the queue, plus Kombi furniture..........


Ding in TC nicely repaired, redelivered black tint worked nicely.
PBG abandoned.


Back to the underside.
Had initially thought I would just touch up the top sides.
Ended up more extensive than that, now I needed to blend the not quite matching paint in.
Probably could have not worried, no one is going to see both sides of the board at once.
But decided I could do better...


But there still seemed to be other projects getting in the way


Got the Kombi furniture moved on, left the Treehouse to tan, decided ona variation of anti shark stripes on the Pretty Blue Gun.
But couldn't make stripe spacings work with avoiding logo and fin boxes.
Ended up with a couple of blocked out bits.


To be continued..............

Whole project has been unplanned and not thought through.
Discovered I still had gaps between top and bottom painting.
Infills needed



Very small awkward infills




Sprayed and unmasked, declared the painting finished.
Also declared the UV tanning of the Treehouse board a fail.


It has been set aside waiting for Plan B


Things I haven't mentioned.
Total lack of planning and haphazard approach was dumb.
I put RSPro on before turning the board over - went on well but made subsequent work even harder.
I wet sanded paddle marks out of the deck, then sprayed with clear coat gloss which seems to have gone well.
Weight gain has been negligible - I probably sanded off more than I sprayed back on.
The whole process was a lot of fun!

Nice board.

nozza
Shame about the treehouse not taking a tan Maybe just some slow exposure to sun over time and see
The Nalu " Big Boy" going well Should be fun in Merimbulla
Looking forward to another go on the blue planet
Do you have a sic 14 like Thommos lying around you want to get rid of
Saw keef made it to western port so we can all relax
Big H

Sophisticated repair stuff......slightly obsessive.....you have a girlfriend?

Nice job , love the tidy workshop.

Very tidy work Nozza!

What paint did you use? Did you use a clear coat to finish?

bloody good question Slab

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alohahugo said..
nozza
Shame about the treehouse not taking a tan Maybe just some slow exposure to sun over time and see
The Nalu " Big Boy" going well Should be fun in Merimbulla
Looking forward to another go on the blue planet
Do you have a sic 14 like Thommos lying around you want to get rid of
Saw keef made it to western port so we can all relax
Big H

Tanning worked, but at about the same speed as natural sun, and I decided it would probably never match if I persisted.
Have other ideas I'll keep you posted on.
I sold Thommo that board, but they do come up from time to time - get Danno to keep an eye out with his mates.

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JoffaDan said..
Very tidy work Nozza!

What paint did you use? Did you use a clear coat to finish?

Paint is British Paints Spray Easy Paint & Prime (Enamel) - seemed to have good coverage and has hardened OK.
Have used White Night Crystal Clear Acrylic on parts of the top. The Bottom I like the wet sanded finish, but I'll see if the paint falls off with use. If so I'll try clear coat to protect it a bit.

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E T said..
Nozza,
I always enjoy a good story, especially when it comes with pictures to keep my attention.
Though like STC I have to say a couple of things:-
1. You have got way too much time on your hands.
2. You have also got way too much money to play with.
3. That's nota Kombi. Kombi's are round.

ET.

Time is a matter of how you spend it.
Monet too I guess....
and calling it a Kombi gains me credibility with the daughters.
Calling it a people mover does the reverse.
And I found you a picture from Encyclopedia Of Surfing.....

Love it. Awesome job Nozza. So glad the old girl is in capable hands and has a new, loving home.

This is some of her history: http://www.australianpaddlesurfer.com/review.php?id=68


And also this:

I liked your answer

great looking board...nice work

Looks like the Pretty Blue Gun has a spot on the Merimbula trailer in 2017, Noz!
She(?) has a Fan Club!