Hydrophobic coatings - marine uses?

Hi,

Man when I saw this stuff on the interweb, the first thing I thought was how cool it would be in marine use butt.....

If you put that neverwet on the bottom of the boat, it rejects water so well, would the boat flip over !!??

kidding aside, that stuff is awesome !

Something about these products makes me want a lot more info before I apply them myself.
I have used a special sealant before on Sandstone around a swimming pool and in wet areas, usually a big no-no for builders to do, and it was a total failure without a total submersion of each stone for a period.
i.e a coating on a side was not adequate and in fact locked the moisture in that was being drawn up from the other sides. However this obviously would not apply to tools or some equipment.
Still the technology and safety of the products have not been proven IMHO.
Imagine the effects of ingesting a small amount of the product on your lungs or gut?

I think the answer is not to ingest it. These days I am working in a lab with things that would kill me in minutes if I ever ingested any of them, or even got them on my skin, it's just about being careful. I'll bet the manufacturer has an MSDS on the contents of their product, you could probably get it if you asked them.

That said, I don't think that these products would necessarily be all that terrible. My guess is that they would be repelled by the water rich lung or gut tissues and be expelled as a hydrophobic particle.

So long as they don't degrade the hull or leech nasties into the water I think it's just a matter of whether they actually work or not.

Very lotus like, grasshopper.

Magical NeverWet arrives in stores

They parnered up with Rustolum, and now it will initially come out at HomeDepot


At NeverWet, we have developed a family of super hydrophobic coating both consumer & industrial, that completely repels water and heavy oils. Any object coated with our NeverWet™ coating literally cannot be touched by liquid. Any liquid placed on this coating is repelled and simply rolls off without touching the underlying surface. Not only is this amazing to see, but it solves a myriad of problems.
Superhydrophobic Coatings | Corrosion Control & Waterproof Coatings | NeverWet


...from Geek Science
Testing out Rustoleum’s NeverWet $20 superhydrophobic spray | Science! | Geek.comWater can’t get away from this coating fast enough, which is exactly what it was supposed to do. The first few times liquid hits this coating, some excess particles of Neverwet will roll away with it. In fact, the first quantity of water I poured over the railing was almost entirely white with the excess coating, as were my fingers when playing with the water droplets. If you’re going to be using NeverWet in an area with high traffic, you’ll probably want to wash away the
excess coating before letting people use it. On wood NeverWet seemed to rub away pretty easily, so if you no longer see the frosted white glaze on your surfaces it’s probably time for another coating.

Despite the original video demonstrations for NeverWet, the instructions make it pretty clear that you aren’t supposed to use this on electronics or clothing, so make sure you’re not buying this stuff just to recreate the original video. The frosted white look really wouldn’t work out well for your smartphone, and the only way you’ll know it’s time for a new coat of NeverWet would be when it stops working.

So, yeah, NeverWet is a $20 superhydrophobic spray available at Home Depot. It’s not perfect, and you can’t coat your smartphone, but it’s going to lead to some very cool experiments.

I wonder if you could coat a sea strainer basket with the stuff? If no water can touch it, then nothing should be able to grow on the surface of the basket.

I also wonder if you can put it on glass to coat them with like a super version of Rain X.

I just coated the 4 large baskets I have to deal with on this boat with ceramic clear coat, which not much of anything can adhere well to, to see if it makes the baskets easy to clean.