After I left the sea, I worked for a couple of years in the Marine Paint Industry and for British Torpedo Marine Paints. I was a technical rep and supervised Shipbuilding, Drydockings and general Tank Coatings. We used Grit Blasting as our main metal cleaner, blasting to SA 2 and SA 3 standards. Depending on the job we then applied two coats of primer followed by the finish. Deck coating were different the Deck Coating was applied in two coats directly onto the bare metal, no primer. It normally contained a paint / sand base and stuck like glue. Very efficient for all non slip deck surfaces. For tanks we used Polyurethane Coatings which dried rock hard and with a plastic looking surface. Very easily cleaned and prepared for different liquids. The metal primers were nearly always zinc or chromate. The Anti Fouling was copper based and you had to be careful with it as it was quite poisonous, however we also had a Polyurethane version which was very new and which was a slow release paint ( dont ask me how it slow released it was a secret and they never told us minions ) It could be quite dangerous at times, I had a colleague killed in Falmouth in a tank explosion whilst the paint spraying was going on. With the Polyurethane paints you had two jets on the spray head one had the base coat and the other the activator and hardener mix. The two combined a short distance away from the spray head, mixed and adhered straight to the metal surface. There was also a third line which carried the thinners which were highly volatile and it would appear that these vaporised and caused the explosion. Very sad as he was an ex deck officer like myself with two children and had come ashore, again like me, as a result of falling ship numbers and lack of berths.