Old wooden rowing boat

[MASH]

I have a beautiful 12' clinker built rowing boat that is in need of paint/varnish/other to keep the wood in good order. It lives on fresh water for 8 mths each year. In the past it has been creosoted and/or cuprinolled by previous owner.

First, is there any alternative to backbreaking hand sanding to prepare a decent surface - particularly inside amongst all the ribs and stringers?

Second, what to treat the timber with? I'm happy to paint inside if I must, but prefer, if practical, a wood finish externally.

Bright ideas please?

 

[Mirelle]

Cleaning and preparing the internals of a clinker boat for varnishing is widely considered to be the worst single job in wooden boat ownership.

However, provided that you are methodical, it is not all that bad.

A 12 footer is too small to go climbing around inside when ashore, so the best method is to prop her at an angle so you can reach in as far as the keel.

You will need:

(if the boat is outside - some means of covering it when you are not working on it)

A robust vacuum cleaner

A couple of Sandvik scrapers - a triangular one and a flat one - and several spare blades.

A hot air gun

A couple of ordinary triangular scrapers and a couple of fine files for sharpening them.

A tin of Nitromors and some steel wool for the bits you really cannot get to any other way, and some white spirit to neutralise it.

A sanding block and some 120 grit or so sandpaper

A couple of old kitchen knives which are now unfit for anything else.

There is no point in varnishing the bilges; scrape the loose finish off and then paint these with primer and then with International Danboline (this is a better bilge paint than the Blakes equivalent, as it is glossy and wipes clean)

Moving on to the rest of the internals, work on one bit at a time. Get as much as you can off with the hot air gun and ordinary triangular scaper, use the vaccum to clean up as you go. Having done that, use the Sandvik scrapers as you would a cabinet scraper, to get the wood perfectly clean. Use the old knives to get into the triangular corners where the ribs leave the lands and get the crud out.

Be fairly gentle with the ribs; you don't want to round them off too much. Scrape away from the roves.

You won't need much sandpaper, just a light sanding will do.

Once you have done the inside, the outside will be a piece of cake...

 

[Woodlouse]

If the oiling the previous owner gave it has worked to preserve the boat thus far I see little point in changing from it.

 

[ValleyForge]

I have found it beneficial to start on the outside first, if you can get a good clear finish on that then it will give you sufficient enthusiasm to continue & do a good job on the inside, which is, as Mirelle says, one of the worst jobs around.
Get some good hand cream in advance !
Tip - broken window glass makes an excellent scraping edge for little places, but take care.

 

[cliffordpope]

Half a broken hacksaw blade is good for getting dirt out from between the planks and the frames.
For painting you need a small brush with long quite stiff bristles.
Stick a bit of plastic hose in the end of the hoover snake and wedge in with a rag, for sucking debris out of tight places.

 

[Spuddy]

If there is creosote, it tends to bleed through owt else put on top so could be crucial to get it all off. There might be a sealer that works.
Oh yes - and thick gardeneing gloves to hold broken glass

 

[tritonofnor]

Guy I know was lucky enough to persuade his local soda blasting guy to remove all the old finishes from his ten foot dinghy in return for borrowing it to display at shows once or twice a year. The whole job took less than half a day, with none of the rounding off of edges you'd get with normal grit blasting and much easier clean up. Time saved on the prep allowed him to give the boat a real quality varnish job without the whole thing taking forever... could be worth a try!

 

[jhughes]

A good friend of mine has just had his wide pine floor in his Georgian house Soda blasted and was not impressed.
The areas where the old varish was reluctant to part company with the floor had a more concentrated use of the blaster which resulted in a weather beaten look (the growth rings/grain were left proud) and any slightly soft areas were hollowed out.
He now wishes that he had had the whole thing chemically stripped!

 

[Adrian_Morgan]

No alternative to hard work. Just take it slow and spread the work over a few days, and it will repay. Get all the crud from under the steamed timbers. You could use a pressure spray but ultimately you will need to get down to a good surface, then sand carefully. Cuprinol, the clear stuff, can be over painted. Creosote, no, no, no...