sources of wood sealer prior to paint

Hey guys i'm near a point where in my restoration project where i need to be looking for a wood sealer prior to painting a wooden boat, this believe it or not this is the first boat i have restored/built made of light ply thats not been sealed with resin and glass cloth
(main reason being the boat is very heavy as it is so adding more weight in epoxy is not a solution i wish to look at) so i'm unsure of the correct way to seal the wood before i spray paint it up to it finished colours.

Any advice in products (mainly) & techniques will be useful but please bare in mind i will be spray painting this boat with car sprays (halfords again) so the wood sealer will need to be one that does not react with those types of paints.

Given this boat is over 50 years old last thing i want to so is mess up the boat by not properly protecting the wood at this stage after all its lasted this long and i hope to give it another 50 years.

Thx in advanced.

A question first Has it been sanded back to bare wood?

If not the following method may blister existing paint.

Model aircraft dope will seal bare wood nicely. Two coats the first mixed with talcum powder to fill any grain in the wood then sanded with 460/600 wet & dry used dry then a second to assure perfect seal.

I have no idea of the type of paint Halfords sell, I have finished aircraft and boats with this method using enamel and automotive lacquers, 2pack and acrylics.

The modern formula of dope has changed and uses Acetone as the thinners previously dope was nitrocellulose based and required Lacquer thinners ( in the 60's don't know when the change came about)

I have used two products for this - Sanding Sealer and Easy Kote resin - the latter is water based and not as heavy as epoxy. The latter not only seals, but also adds strength, particularly to balsa. Sanding Sealer is probably cheaper if you don't need the strength. Both of these will not affect Halfords paints.

Barrie

Gosh! This topic is over a year old, but my experience may be of use to others reading this.

After ding-filling and maybe grain-filling if needed (I got a 250g tub of light woodfiller for £5 or so from the DIY shop; it will last me the next 20 years if just used for models) followed by light sanding, then I used to use Balsaloc - except when I ran out and substituted thinned-down PVA. The latter seems to do exactly the same as the former and at a tiny fraction of the price.

Suck it and see (methaphorically!), but I’d guess at least 10:1 dilution with water. Apply really thinly (one pass is enough) with a small piece of sponge (which you can bin when you've finished (though I'm poor (or mean) enough to wash it under the tap before it gets sticky so I can use it again). Think out a logical covering pattern ‘cos you won’t see where you’ve been. If you are painting over, then add a trace of water-based ink (your own choice of colour) and you will be able to see which bits you’ve already done. In my experience, it will prime over traces of previous paint (as well as the traces of "glue" left behind by old Solarfilm (other brands of heat shrink covering are available)) perfectly well. I reckon added weight is in the milligram zone!

Teaching Granny to suck eggs bit: if you have any doubts, don't spoil the ship for a hap'orth of test piece.

Thanks for the input Mr P its always interesting to pick up on other peoples take on practices and procedures every day a school day eh

What i found with the model after sanding it had a coat of dope over EVERYTHING which is probably why the boat lasted so long in storage however with a lot of models i have restored over the years I've always run into issues with paint surfaces, so now i sand back to the base if possible as i did with the dolphin, i smoothed her over and gave her 4 coats of this..

Direct from cornwallmodelboats.co.uk

This one my dad tested on the little diva kit he got, and it proved very stable for bare wood, and took the primer and the gloss coats i put on for him with little issue.
However, i have recently posted a topic on 2 pack epoxy paints, looking for smaller can sizes 1L or so as the finish with this boat i want to not only be super tough but have little maintenance on after its finished, sadly with most sprays once u get a few nicks and chips they are a pain to repair and touch up, where as the epoxy paints really don't chip away they will take a pounding and you can just buff it right out.