finish on winter parts

[Charlie Santi]

Question and opinons please. Its too cold now to do much work in my boat tent, so I have been working in my basement shop. I am working on parts for a 16' sailboat and a 21' powerboat. Most of the parts are bare wood white oak, mahogany, and red cedar. What should I put on them finish wise until spring when I can put the in the boat. All of the parts in question will be bright finish in the boat.

[Lew Barrett]

You can use either a sealer like Daly's Ship and Shore, which flashes off quickly and is not difficult to apply, or well thinned varnish depending on temperature in the shop, and I haven't noticed much difference between the two. I use varnish if I have an open can laying around, otherwise I reach for the Ship and Shore.
Do a couple of light coats and you're good to go.
Lew


Originally posted by Charlie Santi:
Question and opinons please. Its too cold now to do much work in my boat tent, so I have been working in my basement shop. I am working on parts for a 16' sailboat and a 21' powerboat. Most of the parts are bare wood white oak, mahogany, and red cedar. What should I put on them finish wise until spring when I can put the in the boat. All of the parts in question will be bright finish in the boat.

[Bruce Hooke]

Is there really a need to put any finish on them? If you are worried about the parts drying out too much then store them out in the boat tent or in a similar cold location. Very little drying will take place while the wood is cold.

In some situations pre-finishing can make a lot of sense, but you need to be careful not to put finish on any surfaces that will be glued. The best substance I can think of in terms of not interfering with future glue joints is CPES. The downside of using CPES in your current situation is that the smell of the stuff is not very compatible with a basement workshop.

[Charlie Santi]

I was planning to treat the parts with CPES and even with the exhaust fan in the workshop past experience is it smells for days. I think I will sticker the parts out in the tent and keep an eye on them. Will also watch for more opinons and suggestions.

[Ken Hutchins]

I use thinned varnish, some parts that will be difficult to varnish when the boat is assembled get the full varnish treatment as individual parts before assembly. It helps to prevent checking of large parts, prevents discoloration from aging and also minimizes the inadvertant mark from minor ah-s%!#$. Sand off areas to be glued when needed. There are some parts that I didn't prevarnish and now I'm regretting it because of the extra sanding it takes to clean up the bare scuffed wood. An example of what can happen is if you use a clamp on Oak without a pad to protect the wood you will get purple stain in the wood, with the prevarnish you will not get the stain from the metal clamp. Pay em now or pay em later.

[Thorne]

Try Smith's Cold Weather Formula CPES -- it usually cures within hours. I've been using it on all my new white oak, and it puts down a very varnish-like base.

http://www.luckhardt.com/finishedblade1.jpg

Of course you want to run full ventilation while it is curing, but he does recommends it for indoor applications over the usual "Warm Weather" formula.

http://www.smithandcompany.org/images/potlife.jpg

http://www.smithandcompany.org/CPES/index.html

[ 01-23-2006, 09:57 AM: Message edited by: Thorne ]