Interior Varnishing - how to make it look prettier ?

CPD

CPD

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I don't know a lot about wood used in interiors but can guess that it is a mixture of solids and lamibnates. Assuming it is looking rather drab, would it be generally okay to attack it with paint stripper (taking great care not to allow the paint stripper anywhere near ANY GRP), sandpaper, more stripper, more sandpaper etc ................... and then re-varnish ?

Or is there a better way ?.

Thanks all.
 
Most boat interiors ( assuming modern AWB) are veneer over ply structure. cost effective, looks nice but very difficult to repair or refinish. The veneers are usually around .5mm thick so you can get through it in two passes with a sheet of sandpaper. Yes it can be done and you might be able to do 80% of the boat without messing up once but then you get tired and there's trouble afoot. A lot of finishes are sprayed on in the factory, a pain to match without resorting to the same methods.

I resorted to completely re-veneering my woodwork, a massive job. lovely results but still a big job!
 
Yes that's true. Frankly I have never been terribly successful in renovating veneer. It's OK when the varnish is just a bit sad but if water has got under and you have black bits it's difficult. You can strip the varnish with remover or sand back and then use Oxalic Acid to bleach out the bad bits but try an experiment on the worst area first. It's actually not too difficult to veneer a structure with iron on glue and new veneer, but not to be attempted without trials on scrap bits off the boat first! The trick is to use an iron and roller together applying just the right amount of heat and no more.
 
I used varnish stripper to remove the finish on the interior of my boat then cleaned with soft wire wool. A very light sand and then two coats of Burgess stain. after that 3 coats of the Topgloss water based varnish. Brought back the quality of the teak inside. This product dries in approx 30 mins.

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Check out Burgess products for this work.

Tom

PS No affiliation to the company other than a satisfied customer.
 
Tom, now that looks impressive !. Did you use Burgess varnish remover or the nitromors equivalent, and how did you ensure that none of it got near any GRP, and how did you make sure it had all been removed and and and ...... /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
Many Thanks,
Alan
 
how did you ensure that none of it got near any GRP

I stayed well away from those type of boats.......... Little Ship is a real boat not tupperwear /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

Nitromorse to strip. Burgess is really easy to use and can provide a good finish if you use foam brushes.

Tom
 
Paint over the varnish and cover the rest with veneer, this will at least give you a lot more time for sailing and less spent on maintenance.

Bright work in hard work and expensive, much more fun to go sailing not sanding.

Avagoodweekend......
 
I expect that this will cause much shaking of heads and no doubt someone will point out the errors of my way but I have just cleaned up the wood veneers of my new (old) boat using wire wool and Danish oil.

I cleaned any particularly grotty bits with some sugar soap solution and then set to with the wire wool and plenty of Danish oil. Rubbing lightly and working on a section at a time this seemed to lift off old dirt and wax. I followed up straight away with an oily but not soaking cloth to wipe away surplus and any wire fragments. I managed to clean up all the wooden surfaces in the boat in a couple of days.

I gave all the surfaces a quick wipe with an oily cloth a week later and so far (6 weeks) its looking very nice with the added benefit of a nice smell.

I'm not sure how long the finish will last but I think that the occasional wipe over with my oily rag will probably do the job and as the very wise OldSalt said '//much more fun to go sailing not sanding..'

Cheers,

Andy
 
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