Is this Bow or Where did all the rust go

We have been working on scaling the bow; in fact it started when we were back in Honduras last Fall. As you can see, it needed it. However, as we were stripping off the paint, we are finding many shades of white paint, grays, some light green, black and of course orange and red primer layers.
The thickness reveals 50 years of painting. Based upon the colors used and pictures we have seen of the CBM before she came into the service of the King, we may be stripping of some of the original paint. The paint is older that most of the CBM past crew member and a couple of the current. However some of us do predate the paint.

Katie peeled off some layers of paint to reveal a practical joker who wrote Hi. It had to have been a CBMer in that it was written on the White paint. If you ever wonder how much paint is on the vessel. Well the 1 square foot of the paint that is being chipped of weighs approximately 1 pound (we used a postal scale to weigh the paint pictured). The paint is 5-6 mm thick and we lost count at over 30 layers, with about an even 50/50 split on thickness.

Unlike the crew of the past(we have the luxury of time and no current schedule), rather than chipping only the rested areas, we are stripping down to the raw steel, sealing the steel, priming twice and will paint a new fresh white coat in preparation for the new mission that God has for the CBM. As you can see we are well on our way.

Jeremy, Katie the Needle gun queen, Kathy, Tom and I have gotten very familiar with rust. In fact Katie said at Community Meeting tonight that when she looks at metal, she looks for the rusted areas to be removed. We will update the Blog as we progress with this project. Other projects are, cabin overhead rip outs, cabin deck removals, passageway deck removals as highlighted in another report.

Keep checking this site as we bring you the continued saga of the transformation of the King’s vessel in to the new and improved Caribbean Mercy, ready to go anywhere, do anything that the King calls us to do in His name. It not by our might that anything is accomplished but by His Calling and direction.