Bulkhead prep

[jgurley]

I'm replacing the bulkheads in my plastic boat, and was looking for advice on pre-finishing the wood.

I was thinking I would stain and varnish the bulkheads before installation, leaving the area that gets tabbed as raw plywood (Okoume). The alternatives include doing all the finish work in the boat (messy), maybe staining the whole thing, or I suppose varnishing the whole thing. Seems like the epoxy would bond to raw wood better than varnished, but how about stained?

[Todd Bradshaw]

Option #1 - You could use water-based or alcohol-based stain (not oil stain) on the entire bulkhead, then epoxy coat them on all sides on the bench, finish sand them as needed, tab them into the boat and then finally varnish them. Do not try to use epoxy over varnish. Option #2 would be to use the same stain, then tab them in with epoxy and then varnish over the epoxy tabs and stained ply - assuming that for some reason you decided you didn't want to seal the entire bulkhead with epoxy. Option #1, sealing the entire bulkhead, is generally better.