Bleached Mahogany cabin sides.

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1937rogerdon

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I have removed the varnish from the outside of the cabin, but the timber is very patchy and pale and suffers a loss of colour. Various suggestions include stain,or stain in the varnish to bring back that rich /deep mahogany finish. The boat is Eleanor of Poole a 60 year old Vertue which is 12months into a two year restoration. Any suggestions?
 
The colour is still there.just have to expose it by taking the top shaving off the surface with something like a cabinet scraper, a plane is too aggressive. The blotchy look is caused by some parts have not had quite enough surface removed. We are not talking about much , literally just a few thou off the surface.
Unfortunately, mahogany does bleach quite quickly though, so it is sometimes useful to add a stain on the new surface that does resist bleaching for a considerable time, but avoid a stain that obscures the figure of the wood, a basic non varnish wood dye can be better than a varnish stain, then varnish over that.

John Lilley
 
I stripped my mahogany clinker launch last year and reached that stage after stripper and light scraping.
I used White Spirit to give an indication of the colour when varnished (it then evaporates) and just kept scraping and w spirit until an even colour was reached.
Then on with the Epifanes varnish. I believe has quite good UV resistance.
 
I sanded my mahogany cabin sides back to bare wood in order to apply coelan. This revealed the deep red mahogany under the surface bleaching. According to the detailed instructions, Coelan undercoating with coloured stain still had to be applied to prevent future bleaching.
 
It's odd stuff this wood. I was recently working with a nice piece of mahogany that I inherited , deep red on the surface but when fresh wood is exposed by planing etc it was several shades paler.
 
The coelan primer is excellent, I use it under normal varnish, mine on teak, but mahogany is just as good. It has very high UV protection, and is basically the main component of the Coelan system, the top coat being a sealer, thats all. It will stop or at least minimise bleaching in future, I agree with the other posters, sand it well or scrape it with a cabinet scraper, does the job, it did on the mahogany transom of my clinker dinghy.
 
If you take a short cut and use stained varnish, any chips will show the bleached surface underneath. Best to do the surface preparation that the others suggest.
 
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