Yeah, I know, I haven't posted for a while. It has been a time of varnishing, sanding, varnishing, sanding, varnishing, sanding, and varnishing. Also some work on the spars and rigging, but I'll save that for later.
Doing a good job of varnishing requires amounts of preparation and patience that exceed the supply allotted to me by Mother Nature. Thus, my varnishing job on the boat will achieve two things. First, it will protect the epoxy, which breaks down quickly in ultraviolet light, from breaking down quickly. The varnish acts as a sunscreen.
Second, it will make the boat look like a shiny wooden thing, and from a distance, it will be purty.
The third thing, which I will not have achieved, would be to make the boat look as finely finished as a coffee table, unless we're discussing the plywood-and-cinder block affair I used in my first rented studio apartment, circa 1975.
It does look that good. About.
However, the overall effect, when viewed from 15 feet or further, is quite good.
For the first two coats, I've rolled the varnish on with a thin-nap roller and Sooz has followed immediately with a foam brush to 'tip out' the bubbles. Yeah -- the varnish goes on and bubbles like crazy. But one light pass with a foam brush pops 'em and everything dries smooth. Generally.
I did the third coat more-or-less by myself, because it's hard for Sooz to reach many of the surfaces anyway. And today I'm going to put on the fourth and last coat.
Yesterday I had my first experience wet-sanding, which involves supposedly waterproof sandpaper with a very fine grit and, yes, water. It makes a mess. I wonder if it might have been overkill, for my boat, given the, er, lackluster nature of the overall job. But perhaps it will have been good experience, useful on a later boat or coffee-table build.
A quart or two of the water involved made its way to the bilge -- the inside bottom of the boat -- and I had to remove it with a sponge because the boat is too heavy for me to tip upside down on my own. While all this was going on I noticed no water making its way THROUGH the hull, and took this as a good sign.
This morning I wiped everything down with denatured alcohol and clean rags. But there was a lot of everything to wipe -- the wet-sanded varnish dust turned into dried goop on the boat -- and, having done that, I can still feel some grit on the boat. So I'm going to have to vacuum it and wipe it again before I can lay the varnish on. Looks like it's going to be an all-day adventure. But what better way to spend a day?
At 1pm the Seahawks - 49ers game will come on the radio, and that will be an entertaining diversion while I sweat the afternoon away inside my respirator, wishing I could scratch my nose. As a longtime Bay Area resident I cheered for the 49ers. But now I live here, near Seattle, so I cheer for the Seahawks (a futile endeavor these last few years). I think I'll wait until the late 3rd quarter to decide which team I'll support.
Good luck to us all.
Below, Tyler inspects the aft thwart varnish job. Note the drooping tail: a terrier's way of saying 'huh, unimpressive, dad. Better add another coat or two.'
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