Marine coatings, measured.
Independent commentary, news and working tools on marine coatings - specifications, fouling control, application practice and the economics underneath. Spec'd in mils. Checked in microns.
Commentary on marine coatings, without the vendor slant.
Essays, market surveys and field notes for people who spec, buy and manage paint for a living. New pieces every few weeks.
A shipowner's field guide to hull-cleaning robotics.
Twelve manufacturers, three operating models, no clear winner yet. Where each robot actually lives, how it's controlled, and which one fits how you run your fleet.
When you don't have to solve for fouling.
Biocide-free hard coatings reframe the problem: solve for mechanical integrity, groom the rest. What that suddenly lets you optimize for - and the discipline it demands.
Hull roughness cost cascade.
Coatings are roughly 1% of the total fuel bill over a drydock cycle. A mid-size bulk carrier case study on why getting that 1% wrong moves the other 99%.
Same hull. Three philosophies.
Every underwater hull system starts the same way - blasted steel, anticorrosive epoxy. What goes on top is the strategic decision: deplete it, make it slippery, or make it hard and groom it. Pick one and watch the spec build, coat by coat.
2 × 150 EPOXY · 1 × 75 TIE COAT · 3 × 120 AF - 735 µm DFT
Working tools, not vendor calculators.
First-order models you can sanity-check a meeting with. Assumptions are printed on the panel. No login, no lead form, no vendor thumb on the scale.
What does a dirty hull actually cost you?
Dial in the fouling rating, vessel class and hull regime. Outputs are first-order estimates from an admiralty-style resistance model and typical SFOC figures - directionally honest, not a class deliverable.
Open calculator page →How much paint does the job actually take?
Area, DFT, volume solids, loss factor. The gap between theoretical and practical consumption is where jobs go over budget - so dial in the loss factor honestly, not optimistically.
SR (m²/L) = VS% × 10 ÷ DFT = 18.8
// practical consumption
V = AREA × COATS ÷ SR ÷ (1 − LOSS)
= 5,000 × 2 ÷ 18.8 ÷ 0.65 = 820 L
Run a coastal shipping line.
Keep it earning, not fouling.
Northwind - Coastal Charters is a full three-dimensional fleet simulator built in three.js: contracts, drydock scheduling, hull care and the economics of keeping ships on charter instead of idle. It plays in the browser, free, with the same first-order fouling and fuel-penalty logic behind CALC 01 above.
Sign in with a free Mils & Microns membership and your fleet saves to your account, so you can pick up the same ships next time you visit.
Free membership required to save progress. Plays in any browser.
Written by an operator, not a marketer.
Mils & Microns is written by Adam Stuchlik, a coatings industry lifer with extensive experience through R&D, sales and marketing. The commentary here is grounded in reality, driven by log reports and crawling ballast tanks, not press releases and brochures.
Everything published here is independent. No sponsorships, no affiliate links, no manufacturer slant - if a product is named, it is because the public record supports it.