Varnish suggestions?

[brian_g]

My wife and I are in the process of removing all the varnish from the wood on the Little Provider. Does anyone have a great varnish they can recommend? There seems to be a pretty wide variance in price...

Thanks,
Brian

[NoSlack]

I found an old post by Wizard, where he goes into some details about re-doing his teak. http://www.bocaboard.com/forum/showthread.php?304-9-Month-Rub-Rail-Project-on-The-Reel-One

He was using 6 coats Sikkens, multiple coats of clear Epifanes

Mike

[brian_g]

Thank for the info! I should have done a search before posting. We decided on Epiphanes as well.

-Brian

[NoSlack]

I only found it because I knew Wizard posted it. Took a while to weed through the post to find it. Searched varnish and came up with nothing. Searched all posts by Wizard and weeded through until I spotted it.

Mike

[brian_g]

I completed my re-varnishing of the gunwale cap on the Little Provider. The instructions from Epifanes called for 8 coats with titrated dilutions of varnish/thinner. The last 2 coats were almost straight spar varnish which dried quickly so speed in application was pretty important. I will try to upload photos of before and after. The varnish looks great and I'm hoping to get on some of the other wood components on the deck in the next couple weeks. I learned that cheap brushes are HORRIBLE for applying varnish (probably anything else for that matter).

Thanks again for the advice!

-Brian

[brian_g]

I finished the varnish some time ago, but just got around to uploading a picture.

Thanks for all the advice regarding how to go about removing the varnish. Without the suggestion of the heat gun, I would have not been able to complete this adventure.

As I just mentioned, the first step was to go over every inch of the old varnish with an industrial heat gun and putty knife. This took quite some time, but took everything down to the wood.

http://www.bocapix.com/data/512/IMG_3746_resize.jpg

At that point, my wife Amy and I sanded everything with 200 grit sand paper. The boat looked beautiful with the freshly sanded wood! We called the boat sanding our “date night”

http://www.bocapix.com/data/512/IMG_3574_resize.jpg

Once the wood was wiped down with acetone, I taped up everything I could

http://www.bocapix.com/data/512/IMG_3704_resize.jpg

We began with 10% varnish + 90% thinner for the first coat and worked our way down from there. All in all, it was 8 coats.

http://www.bocapix.com/data/512/IMG_3716_resize.jpg

The engine box in this photo gives you the "before" and the gunwale cap is the "after".

http://www.bocaboard.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=171&d=1415036288

[NoSlack]

looking good. Did the 20's all have that wood gunwale cap?

Mike

[brian_g]

Mike,
To my knowledge this is the only 20' (or any other size Blackman for that matter) that has the wood gunwale cap. I'm not sure why it was made this way.

Thanks,
Brian