Bilge Paint for wooden boats

Kind of a neutron paint bomb . . .

 

You guys are'nt very helpful.
Does it come in a can, tube or what.
Get it in a hardware store a hospital or a landfill?
Is it a paste, liquid or a powder?

 

its a one part paint in a tin

 

Red lead comes as a very heavy orange powder from the kiln. Mixed to paste with linseed oil for shipping, thinned to paint for application. Illegal substance most places, but the best thing for the job, so long as you don't have to deal with the ultimate disposal of the boat. You won't find it at the ACE hardware, but some surplus stores and old paint stores might have some in the back room.

 

...then of course there is white lead too, but it was used more as a mastic compound instead of paint as is red lead.

 

White lead/linseed oil paste mixed with whiting powder into a stiff putty was standard topside seam goop for a very long time. My friend Pete Culler used to wax on and on about how wonderful it was. BERTIE started life with white lead in all the topside and deck seams, but nearly 30 years on, at least 1/2 or 2/3s of that has been replaced with commercial topside seam putty when re-caulking and hardening seams at overhauls. The WL putty eventually shrank and got very hard and cracked. White lead was the usual pigment in white paint before titanium dioxide (I think that's what they use for white now). That's the reason for the US EPA lead warnings on any product or tool that might be associated with removing old house paint.
My canvas cabin top, laid over felt in early 1978, was painted thoroughly with white lead paint when new and it certainly hasn't rotted or gotten mildewed, though the paint has been burned off twice.
In this pic the orange is red lead and the blue is tinted white lead. Topsides at this time were oil-based house paint. Now all paint is Interlux Brightsides.

 

We used to mix White Lead and Grease about 50/50 for an Anti-Seize compound for nuts, bolts and other places where you did not want things to corrode like under wear plates on machines. The mix was also used to lube the centers on the tail-stock of a lathe. Worked great.

 

Thanks very much guys. I'm interested in the old methods and materials as I think we jump too quickly to new stuff. I recently removed something from my old boat (FG 70s) that (I think) obviously was bedded in with Dolphinite. Looks like it was still keeping the water out after 35 years. Just put an external deck plate (1" ply) on my fore deck and bedded the whole thing in w Dolphinite. I could have used modern stuff like SikaFlex but if it starts leaking in the future pulling it up for a re-do will be relatively painless compared to modern stuff and I'm not glueing something together ...just trying to keep the water out. I really like Culler's stuff and he waxes on and on about tallow and Pine Tar too. I have used his kerosene way to "drive the paint into the wood" on initial coatings. Thanks to his lore my teak cap rail is well protected and looks fine to good even in my SE Alaska weather.

 

Paint on the inside of a wooden boat has not proves real successful but using a stain that allows for water absorbsation/evaporation has a very successful history on commercial workboats