Varnish... where do I start?

[WilliamUK]

Today I picked up some stripe sapele ply to fix up the hole in the deck on Blithe Spirit.
Quite excited to start cutting back to good wood and getting her closer to returning to the water I'm looking into varnish.

I'm currently planning to strip off all the old varnish to get as nice a finish as I can. If I go for that option, what varnish should I be looking at? Being a dinghy she'll usually be covered so probably doesn't need the UV resistance of something used on a bigger boat, I would like to make a decent job of it though.

Trouble is, I don't know my whatsit from my thingamy when it comes to varnish. I've been told to go for International (or another boat-type brand I can't recall right now), but can't say I know which I should use.
I assume that Original and Schooner Gold are different somehow, but how?

How do I know what colour (clear, amber or whatever) to expect from one varnish or another?

I'm going to need about 1.5 litres from what I've been told (6 to 8 coats recommend by a guy who knows his boats) but at £25 a can Schooner Gold seems a bit steep.

Can someone please tell me what to use? Haha.


Alternative plan is to get varnish on the repair and a couple of bare patches before finding somewhere to do the strip and re-varnish after the summer's sailing is done. Thoughts on that would also be welcome.

 

[johnalison]

I think you will find that everyone has their favourite. In my opinion, the way it is applied is more important than the brand and good results can be had from most marine varnishes.

 

[WilliamUK]

I've looked into application and found some informative stuff.
Still somewhat baffled by the different options though.

How clear is "high clarity" and how would it look on sapele?
What exactly is a "warm amber" and how would it look?

Having read a bit I think I may go for traditional over PU, but beyond that I'm still kinda lost.

 

[Lakesailor]

This Forumite may know.

 

[Channel Sailor]

Varnish

I have only limited experience with varnishing, but I have actually done it a few times on different woods and different varnishes. Bow sprit and washboards being my most recent project. My tips would be to decide if you want a hard durable finish or can cope with a traditional rather soft spar type of finish. The traditional finish looks better and is easier to maintain (annually) recoat and sanding. Whereas the other sort of varnish is maybe not oil based (polyurethane instead?). Anyway, this one is much harder and each coat much thinner, and it is tough. It looks OK but does not have the luxury finish of the traditional stuff.

I have used Sikkens hard varnishes very successfully, and for the traditional (Dutch style) I have used several high proper quality yacht makes and they all seemed OK but Sikkens seemed to be my preference. Over two years use the non traditional varnish certainly lasted longer.

As for the colour,or any stain in the varnish, I suggest if you like the colour of the wood now, then use clear.

 

[G12]

Schooner gold is nice stuff. I put 9 coats on my tiller last year and it still looks great. One thing is that it takes a while to dry.... I put one coat on every 12 hours and then after each 2nd coat I left it for 24 hours to make it hard enough to wet and dry flat again.

I bought some quick drying Blakes duragloss stuff to try on my cap rail and hand rails later this year when I get time, pureley because it gets good reviews and goes off fast.

 

[Tranona]

For sapele ply on a foredeck that is not going to be exposed except for the couple of hours at a time when you are sailing, you cannot beat a conventional one pot varnish such as International or Epifanes. Take it right back to the base veneer and apply a couple of thinned coats then gradually build up coats - as many as 8 or 10, leaving them to go hard and flatting down in between. Couple of weeks work under cover - but you will be able to see your face in it and the colouring and stripes will show through. Did my Osprey like that and it lasted for years. You will probably do the whole foredeck with one tin.

 

[WilliamUK]

Thanks all for your replies.


Lakesailor - I may drop him a line. It's really not easy to figure this stuff out. It's not like I can just pop into the local hardware place and have a look at some samples and get an idea of the final look.


Channel Sailor - PU vs traditional is a tricky one. I like the idea of a really lush finish on the wood, but being a dinghy, the gunwales will be seeing a fair bit of abuse over time. I suppose it wouldn't be too big a job to pick a good day to give them an extra coat before they wear through.
Either way the boat will be spending more time covered than not so I probably don't need the hardiest of finishes... as long as it can hold up to plenty of sitting-on.
That is unless I'm over-estimating the ability of traditional varnishes to be sat on every time they are taken onto the water.

I'm hoping for something that looks like the bit of deck just beyond the kicker in image 1 of this post: http://www.ybw.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3480136&postcount=16
It's got a deeper colour than the rest of the foredeck which looks a lot more yellow/gold in colour... possibly it's lifting from the wood. The bits under the deck fittings like cleats and fairleads is darker still and looks really very pretty.
(In picture 4 you can see how the woodwork aft of the washboards needs work.)



G12 - I like the sound of Schooner Gold... though I still don't know how to imagine it'll look, but unless I can find someone selling it for about a half of the normal price (and even that would sting a bit) I don't think I can afford it.


Tranona - There's sapele ply on the foredeck and the gunwales. Since the existing varnish is really past it I'm planning to strip the lot and start over. Does that make any difference to you saying a traditional 1 pot is the way to go?
I've been told a 750ml pot should get me up to about 3 or 4 coats on the whole thing (dunno how accurate that is though) so will be needing a couple of cans... or maybe a 2.5 litre can for future coats too if it'll keep.
Please see my comment to Channel Sailor above about the colour of the decks... any thoughts on the right varnish for the job having seen that?

 

[jwilson]

Today I picked up some stripe sapele ply to fix up the hole in the deck on Blithe Spirit.
Quite excited to start cutting back to good wood and getting her closer to returning to the water I'm looking into varnish.

I'm currently planning to strip off all the old varnish to get as nice a finish as I can. If I go for that option, what varnish should I be looking at? Being a dinghy she'll usually be covered so probably doesn't need the UV resistance of something used on a bigger boat, I would like to make a decent job of it though.

Trouble is, I don't know my whatsit from my thingamy when it comes to varnish. I've been told to go for International (or another boat-type brand I can't recall right now), but can't say I know which I should use.
I assume that Original and Schooner Gold are different somehow, but how?

How do I know what colour (clear, amber or whatever) to expect from one varnish or another?

I'm going to need about 1.5 litres from what I've been told (6 to 8 coats recommend by a guy who knows his boats) but at £25 a can Schooner Gold seems a bit steep.

Can someone please tell me what to use? Haha.


Alternative plan is to get varnish on the repair and a couple of bare patches before finding somewhere to do the strip and re-varnish after the summer's sailing is done. Thoughts on that would also be welcome.

Personally for external varnishwork including on a dinghy I much prefer ordinary varnish, not polyurethane, as it is very easy to get off again each time you want to revarnish. I used polyurethane once and whilst it lasted longer, once some started to flake getting the remaining sound stuff off was really hard work.

After many years of wooden boats and GRP boats with lots of pretty varnished wood our spec when buying the present boat was "no varnished wood on deck", so I'm not up to speed with current products.

 

[PhillM]

My boart is Mahogany and we have just rebuit the cockpit using a combination of original wood and sapalie.

I have used several makes of varnish on my boat and have now settled for Epifanes. There is a difference between the brands and you can see it in the finished work.

I was no expert but after 2 years working with a couple of guys who are, here are my top tips:

Take the wood back to bare.
First coat, dilute to 75% with same brand thinners - don't use white spirit
Second coat dilute to 50%
Third onwards, dilute a little say, add 10% thinners

The quality of the brush does make a difference.

Between each coat, dry scrub with 600 grit until the varnish goes white. You can get what look like scouring pads from the chandlers and these are really good.

Use decent tack rags - just wiping over with white spirit is not as good. The clean up is really important. Buy a bulk pack, it will save you money.

It takes a while to build up a really dry, hard base and if you add too many coats in a short space of time, they dont dry properly. So after the first 4 coats, STOP adding coats for a month. You can use the boat in this time, just remember to wash down and let it dry before starting to add more coats.

Oh and doing it on a nice warm day with a beer in one hand helps

Once you have a really good finish you can then do a simple scrub and recoat every 6 months and your boat will look fantastic.

 

[Tranona]

From your photos it looks as if the sapele will come up well. Strip all the old varnish off - hot air gun and maybe Nitromors. Avoid too much sanding as the veneer is not very thick. You should then get an idea how consistent the colouring is and wiping over with white spirit will give an idea what it will look like when varnished. Then follow the coating regime Philm suggests. The big advantage of conventional varnish is that it can be touched up easily, but in my experience, if you have a cover on the boat when not in use it will last years - at least on the foredeck. The side decks may need more attention, but if you have a solid coating they will stand up to quite a lot of abuse. On my Osprey I had non slip strips on the high wear points and deck paint on the gunwhale edges.

 

[WilliamUK]

Personally for external varnishwork including on a dinghy I much prefer ordinary varnish, not polyurethane, as it is very easy to get off again each time you want to revarnish. I used polyurethane once and whilst it lasted longer, once some started to flake getting the remaining sound stuff off was really hard work.

Not having owned a boat before this I'm not too up to speed on how often you need to strip the varnish back completely, but knowing there's always a chance of damage which may lead to me wanting to do so during the repair does put me off the PU stuff.

I've been told it's still possible to get some PU varnishes off with a heat gun and scraper (International Compass in particular) but is it significantly trickier than it should be?

My boart is Mahogany and we have just rebuit the cockpit using a combination of original wood and sapalie.

I have used several makes of varnish on my boat and have now settled for Epifanes. There is a difference between the brands and you can see it in the finished work.

I was no expert but after 2 years working with a couple of guys who are, here are my top tips:

Take the wood back to bare.
First coat, dilute to 75% with same brand thinners - don't use white spirit
Second coat dilute to 50%
Third onwards, dilute a little say, add 10% thinners

The quality of the brush does make a difference.

Between each coat, dry scrub with 600 grit until the varnish goes white. You can get what look like scouring pads from the chandlers and these are really good.

Use decent tack rags - just wiping over with white spirit is not as good. The clean up is really important. Buy a bulk pack, it will save you money.

It takes a while to build up a really dry, hard base and if you add too many coats in a short space of time, they dont dry properly. So after the first 4 coats, STOP adding coats for a month. You can use the boat in this time, just remember to wash down and let it dry before starting to add more coats.

Oh and doing it on a nice warm day with a beer in one hand helps

Once you have a really good finish you can then do a simple scrub and recoat every 6 months and your boat will look fantastic.

In your prescribed method, is the first coat 75% thinner and 25% varnish?

I've been told to lay on 3 layers and scrub, repeated until there's at least 9 layers on there. Any particular benefit to scrubbing between every layer? I'm not wedded to multiples of three, just wondering about the reason behind it.

From your photos it looks as if the sapele will come up well. Strip all the old varnish off - hot air gun and maybe Nitromors. Avoid too much sanding as the veneer is not very thick. You should then get an idea how consistent the colouring is and wiping over with white spirit will give an idea what it will look like when varnished. Then follow the coating regime Philm suggests. The big advantage of conventional varnish is that it can be touched up easily, but in my experience, if you have a cover on the boat when not in use it will last years - at least on the foredeck. The side decks may need more attention, but if you have a solid coating they will stand up to quite a lot of abuse. On my Osprey I had non slip strips on the high wear points and deck paint on the gunwhale edges.

I'll be doing it the old fashioned way. Heat gun and scraper and scraped down to bare wood. I won't be doing any sanding that I can avoid... thanks for the tip about keeping it light though. I'll keep it in mind if I do.

Does wiping with white spirit give a hint of the colour assuming a pretty clear varnish like International Original? I suppose it's just up to my imagination to figure out what the more amber varnishes might bring it up like.

Not sure I could bring myself to paint the woodwork on her though. The wood certainly softened my view of the work she needed when watching the auction run on eBay, it doesn't seem to make sense to hide any of it now I actually have to do the work.

 

[samwise]

I'd say Epifanes or if you want the real whizzo job Le Tonkinois. I find the latter more durable with an incredible finish but it needs lots of coats and lots of money!

 

[tcm]

on raw wood, hand varnishing/painting (with a brush)... the name of the game is preparation. Preparation preparation preparation. For a really fab job, expect to do at least 95% of the time preparation, under 5% actual slapping on the varnish. You rarely see a pro painter actually painting - mostly he is sanding things, and he won't want anyone around causing extra air/dust movement when the gear is being applied, and he won't be brushing for very long anyway.

You need to buy lots of dry-type sandpaper for the wood itself. Get the raw wood lovely smooth with sandpaper and then go thru finer and finer grades of flour paper, "warming" the paper (rub it on itself) so as to get a silken smooth finish as far as possible on the raw wood - it can be made to silky-shine with no varnish at all.

The edges/corners are one giveaway. Sand into corners and don't over-smooth external radius. If you can dismantle wooden parts to varnish elsewhere, so much the better. If you can't dismantle, consider masking to protect other things from being whoops sanded as well.

Once you have a smooth surface of raw wood, you might think it's all fine to do some varnish? No. You have to turn the grain - wipe the surface with a damp rag - and it suddenly goes rougher. Leave it a while/day to dry, sand down again, damp rag, and again, until it stays smooth. If you don't do this it'll be like other bits of varnishing which (not) inexplicably seem to become rougher upon applying the first coat.

Use good masking tape - the blue 3m stuff is the proper gear - other stuff become v difficult to remove.

Thin the first coat a lot, second coat less someone above said 75%, 50% 10% and that sounds good. And thinning shows that .... you should use a separate tin/container for the varnish you are dipping the brush into. in other words your tin of varnish should be opened briefly to pour some out, wiped and shut again. That tin of varnish is never dipped with a brush, and never left open.

If you are varnishing outside, try complete varnishing before (say) midday - otherwise there is risk that your varnish all be affected by late afternoon moisture.

But usually, you shouldn't be varnishing - you should be doing preparation. Waiting an extra day for an earlier coat to harden is good cos if you "pull" the surface, urg, restart, or sanding, and more sanding.

Avoid using sandpaper in your hand - use a sanding block. Otherwise you will likely "dig out" any v slight irregularities and it'll look a bit amateurish, revarnished. This is the reason why using any sort of spinning disc or vibrating sanding tool should be avoided if at al possible - you lose the ability of the finished piece to give a coherent single shining reflection along/across its entire surface. And for the same reason, you varnish in very thin coats else some parts will be gloopy thick, others thin, and the next coat fills some but thickens others and the surface shines but hm, looks treacly. The treacly look is caused by too-thick coats, and sanding without a sanding block.

Consider making a sanding block for external convex curves (e.g. toe rails) , and watching carefully to find/remove high spots.

The treacly look is also caused by over-rounding of edges/vertices - care needed, sand sparely.

Best brush you can find, whack it around a bit , soak it overnight so when you test-varnish some paper (for example) it's not losing bristles.

Varnishing itself is fast. Try to limit the working edge, keep brush not-too loaded, and once it's done, move away and/or shut the door on the job if possible.

If you ain't sure about things - get a spare bit of wood and try it out on that. Practise sanding, practise varnishing, test new varnish, test a roller/brush.

One old guy said that "a polish is a scratch you can't see" ... and it's the same with varnish. There are irregularities, always. Question is - can you see them. And -heh- do you care?

If unsure about paining or varnishing... varnish first and paint over that.

 

[WilliamUK]

Samwise - I've had a look and could use Epiphanes for roughly the same price as International Original, so I'm considering those as my options at the moment. The big difference is that with Original I can get about an extra litre for something like an extra £5 which would give me just about all the varnish I'll need for maintaining the finish for quite a while to come.
Anything more expensive still just isn't going to happen though, I don't think. Got to stay budget minded.


TCM - thanks for a very helpful post. I'm going to be a lot more preparation minded after reading that. On close inspection I see that the sapele ply in the wood I've got to fill the hole is just shy of 1mm thick so I do have room to sand it down a bit. The top layer in the existing decks is about the same too so I may well give it all the same treatment, smoothing, turning and smoothing some more. I'll just have to be careful not to get too carried away though.
I know it'll vary from one bit of wood to another, but how much wood do you think I'd have to sand down through until things stay smooth?

I'm not so sure about dismantling parts to work on though. I'm sure it'd give the best finish I could get, but if I start doing that I'll be looking at stripping the decks off entirely and re-building them and I'm really in no hurry to do that. I think I'd rather just do the work needed to get her sound, sailing and looking good enough. It's less of a restoration job than a repair job with an eye to doing it well.

I'm not sure what you mean by sanding into corners and not over-smoothing external radius. Could you dumb it down a little?

 

[WilliamUK]

Some slight progress to report.

Following tranona's suggestion I wiped over a bit of the sapele ply with white spirit. I was very surprised at how dark it went and it looked fantastic. It went to roughly the same colour as some of the darker parts on the boat and has a lovely stripe to it.
So, should I expect a similar colour from using something like International Original or is that likely to leave a lighter finish than a white spirit wipe would?


I'm waiting to hear whether my local, independent hardware-monger can get hold of a skarsten scraper (as advised by the boatbuilder I got my ply from) but if not, I don't suppose any of you know somewhere around Manchester that might have them for sale for not a lot of money, do you?