our project

[piquet95971]

I am sick and tired of not seeing too much finished so today I put the second coat of Varnish on the transom. It makes the whole of the outside look so much closer, if not in reality, to completion.

I also filled all the little divots on the bottom with some epoxy putty stained in an attempt to match the rest of the boat. Wrong thing to do! I now have pink splotches all over the bottom. After it has dried and been sanded off, before the varnish, I will hit it with stain on an artists brush and see what how looks.

Part of the bow planks also renailed. Also scrubbed the Brass keel strip and bent it to the correct shape so that it sits nicely ready for rescrewing when the boat gets nearer completion.

cheers
Peter

[piquet95971]

So a bit more progress today.

After a quick road trip with my daughter to Sydney so that she can restart her university course I returned with the nails that I needed to nail off the planking at the bow.

Today I did the renailing of the stemlanking with some epoxy squeezed between the planks and the stem. I doubt that there was ever any there from the initial build. There is now.

I started sanding off the patches of epoxy in the divots and managed to sand back 4 planks with wet and dry. It's a slow process when doing it by hand.the final job today was refilling some of the divots that were not quite filled enough first time around.

So now I have a question.

Am I best to stick with the traditional Spar Varnish for the outside of the hull or go for a single pack polyurethane Varnish.

I am not going anywhere near the two pack systems as they seem to be fraught with problems if the whole thing is not done correct. The single pack stuff seems to be a lot more forgiving.

So what are the general thoughts?

I will be using the Spar Varnish inside the boat.

[piquet95971]

OK so where. Are we up to?

Between having to work to earn a living, the scourge of the boating class, I decided to use Norglass Poly Clear Gloss on the exterior of the boat including the deck and the Feast and Watson Spar Varnish on the interior.

I already have the F/W Spar Varnish which is one reason. The main one but I think it may also stand up to the rigours of dropped tools, oil and petrol and al that stuff in the interior better than the finer Norglass.

Yesterday arvo I dragged the interior frame work down from the carport roof beams, sanded them and applied the first coat of varnish. They look quite good after just the one coat. Depending on what time I complete my work today I will get another coat on today.

So the carport is full of boat hull and cockpit framing so I suppose that it's a boat port!

Chat soon
Peter

[bootlegger]

Well done mate. I guess like me you cant post pics.
Whatever you do dont rush the varnish.
One coat per day and sand.
Ive found if you hand sand along the grain you have less chance of the varnish running.

[piquet95971]

Thanks for the tip Dave.

I have tried to post pictures but can't seem to master it.

The best way that I can do it is to email them to Greg and in the past he has been good enough to stick them in the posting for me. I will give it another try tonight and see what happens.

[piquet95971]

one photo at a time may be the way to go
Top plank stained and a couple of coats of varnish to seal it

[piquet95971]

transom renailing and spot staining

[piquet95971]

Stbd stain, varnish and incomplete caulking

[piquet95971]

finished sanding off the Starboard side this morning.
Wiped it down with a metho dampened rag and applied the first coat of varnish. Not too worried that it's a bit windy and that dust will get on the surface as it is the first coat and will have to be sanded off mant times to get the surface that I am after.
Will let it dry overnight, start sanding and filling the Port side tomorrow.
Photo soon.

[piquet95971]

Looking at the photo of the stbd side in a previous post you can see my problem. The main part of the boat is red stained timber as can be clearly seen except for the top two planks especially the top plank. I thought that the mahogany stain was going to closeto the other colour but after a coupe of coats of varnish it was really noticeable that it was too brown and looked yuk.

I know that some might say that I am being picky but I want this to look really spot on. I took a sample of the original top plank to a proper paintshop. I had purchased the first lot at the big green shed where the staff were a lot less than helpful or knowledgable especially about some things that their stores may not stock but should be available from other sources. But they are a whole topic by themselves.

This lot is a stain and varnish. It was colour matched to the sample of planking that I had supplied. Tomorrow, seeing that I haven't got any work in the morning, I will find a part of the new planking off cut and do a job on it and see how it comes up before I go to the extent of doing a whole plank only to find that I'm not happy with this coating either.

I did manage to strip off all the previous varnish and stain ready for a new application. I also wet and dry sanded the ransom in preparation for a mother coat of varnish.

Tomorrow while the test piece dries! I will start to sand off the port side in perpetration for varnishing.

I put the centre cockpit section out in the sun today to let the varnish coats harden right up before sanding and applying more varnish.

Not sure exactly when to seal the caulking in the garboard seam. Early before varnishing or to alloy a couple of coats then seal the caulking and then more coats. Any advice would be appreciated.