This tip came to me from newly found friend Cody Richardson. You may know Cody from his incredibly creative use of license plates to make customized fish art. Apparently he’s a bit of a boat head too, and definitely knows his way around a shop. This past weekend, he made use of some fancy Sherwin-Williams paint and helped two of his buddies turn their rusty beat-down trailers into something they could pass off as new.
In his words…
“A couple of good friends’ drift boat trailers were in pretty rough shape so I figured I would help them out. I painted my Clackacraft trailer about three years ago with this paint and it is still holding up strong. Figured I’d help them out and show them how it’s done. We set these trailers on some sawhorses in the yard and got after it. One of the trailers was already prepped and ready to go while the other one was dirty and had surface rust covering most of it. We remove the wheels, I then hit the rusty one with a sander and some zinc spray paint to inhibit for the rusting. I used a Sher-Kem industrial-grade metal finishing enamel that Sherwin-Williams makes. I use a cheap HVLP spray gun from Harbor Freight. This paint dries quick enough that we were able to apply three coats on the top and bottom of each trailer. This paint dries rock hard and looks like black glass on the trailer.”
The image in the header above was the trailer before painting and the series below are after. There’s also an image of the products used for this incredible DIY trailer transformation. Enjoy.
