I posted this on the Cruiser’s Forum to get some answers. I figure I’d post it here to see if any readers can offer an opinion:
In the process of restoring Windsong I have been taking home pieces of interior wood and trim to work on when I have time. All of the interior woodwork was stained with a dark reddish hue and didn’t appear to have much of a finish coat of varnish or anything. The woodwork is mostly teak with a few mahogany pieces.
For an example, here is a teak cabinet door and its trim taken from the v-berth. The lighting doesn’t show how dark and ugly the stain is, but you get the idea.
For each piece I clean the wood off then strip the old finish and stain with a chemical stripper. After stripping I sand the piece down to 220 grit all over and end up with some nice looking wood:
with a bigger cabinet door & trim:
My question now is what do I do next?
My current plan is to use Minwax Helmsman to finish, but am unsure about how to start. They recommend using the Minwax stains for a first coat and if I want to keep the color of the teak I assume use the “natural” stain. But there are a few areas where there are nicks and dings which will need to have wood filler applied before finishing. Will a stain be necessary for these patched ares to not stand out? Will this require me to stain all of the wood a darker color for uniformity?
Would a few thinned layers of the varnish do the same thing to seal and provide a base layer? Or would their brand of stain work best as a base […]
I wanted to take my parents out to the boat for a post-Christmas sail this previous Saturday. They have seen and been on Windsong, but haven’t been out for a ride yet. I had been following the weather conditions for Saturday all week and it looked to be a great day for sailing with 15 knot winds out of the North. That would allow us to beam reach all the way out of the channel so we could start sailing before we even got to the final channel marker. The only issue I really saw was that it would be a chilly day (for us Floridians) with highs in the 50’s. High tide would be in the morning when we would head out, but we would have to come back at low tide. However, it would be a +1 foot low tide, which I was told would be deep enough for Windsong to make it through the river with.
I typically have gotten nervous when it comes to taking Windsong out, rightfully so I might add. I am still a rookie with this boat and particularly the area it is in. Especially after breaking down the first time I took her out, I can’t help get nervous. But this time I wasn’t worried about the engine or anything particular about the boat. I’ve tuned the engine and performed all needed maintenance on it and it worked like a charm the last outing. But something was eating away inside me the few days leading up to Saturday and I didn’t understand it. Some sort of premonition told me it we shouldn’t go, but I ignored it and attributed it to my normal nerves. I should have listened.
So we took the 3 hour ride from St. Augustine to Inglis with my […]
Lots to do inside that’s for sure. David Smith has the project of the cabin sides and new handrail at their bottom. Right now he is scarfing pieces of 9MM marine plywood and shaping to fit. I missed getting a picture of the cardboard templates made for them, he tacked them up along each side to indicate the dimensions of the new cabin sides. Once they are installed we’ll paint them white and start to build the handrails that will trim out the bottom of each side. And then we can install windows!
Last weekend I got to disassemble more of the boat by removing various parts of the cabin trim in the way of the cabin side installation. I removed the rails around the top of the hanging lockers while I was at it and peeled off the old Harvest Gold formica tops to those. I scraped off the old glue and then cleaned the tops of each locker with Acetone.
I did get to do a bit in the cockpit. The deck just aft of the lazarette was bothering me, it hadn’t been sealed and the holes for the steering shaft were not filled either. I mixed some epoxy and buttered up the inside edge of the steering shaft hole through the deck. Tomorrow I’ll drill out the holes oversize and fill with epoxy. Then I can re-drill and mount the steering shaft bearing underneath and the tiller tim above.
It’s also time to start my prop shaft project. The shaft is quite pitted where it goes through the packing box and I’ll never get it to seal that way. I’m hoping I can slide the shaft back and get the shaft seal and rubber hose out, cut a new piece of […]
We learned about sanding, sanding and more sanding. We also learned about filling, fairing, priming and taping. We stripped the cap-rail and removed the old sealant from the inner and outer edges. We removed anything from the cabin and decks that had not already been removed. We hired Brooks from Charlot Marine to spray the primer and finish coats. We dry fit all the cabin and deck hardware and brightwork and drilled out their respective fastener holes through the epoxy plugs we had made.
We had been warned that repainting the cabin and decks would be a time consuming process. True to the prediction it took an incredible amount of time. Truly incredible. It would be easier the 2nd or 3rd time, but not really knowing what to do sure helped make it a long experience. After the first prime coat we found all of our imperfections, well almost all. After the 2nd coat we found some more, and we found yet a few more after the 3rd coat.
Finally the top coat, Awlcraft 2000. It sure looked good, not perfect but good. We have a drip to try to sand out and a couple other problems but it looks good. Hopefully it will stay on long enough that I won’t have to do that again real soon.
We had lots of hot days, mid-90’s by noon. We started at dawn and either came back in the evening or simply laid off at 2 or 3 for the day.
Once the non-skid was done it was time for assembly. We fit and installed each fitting, mounted winches and etc. In spite of the dry fitting and drilling a few pieces took some additional steps. All were bedded with polysulfide. We first dry fit […]
Tiffany in the park just down from the marina here in Whangarei:
Well I’ve been in New Zealand for about a month and I’m already falling behind on the blog posts. For the most part I’ve just been taking care of lots of little projects for the last couple of weeks making the boat more livable. The engine is back in with two of the motor mounts replaced, a rebuilt alternator and a new water pump. It seems to be running as well as it ever has. I also added 2” of Styrofoam to the walls of my fridge and 4” on the bottom to try and keep it from running 24 hours a day. It’s now running a little less than half the time which means Jason now gets cold beer and fresh veggies when he’s done working for the day.
New motor mounts and cleaned up coupling waiting for my Suzie diesel to go back in:
My newly insulated fridge:
Weekend before last Arek and his buddy Adam drove up from Orewa for the weekend. Arek and Iwona have been living just north of Auckland for the past year spending all their free time working on a free classified ad site for New Zealand: www.ulist.co.nz. Everyone over here uses a site called tradme, which is similar to ebay in it’s fee structure and is quite infuriating. Infuriating enough that Arek has become obsessed with getting the craigslist model running successfully in this country. Well Ulist was talked about, music was played, rum was drunk and catching up was done and in the morning we took off for the Bay of Islands in Arek’s car. I skipped the Bay of Islands when I sailed into NZ last year […]
If donating please state in the extra info field during the donation process if you do not want to be publicly credited for your donation on the forums donation page.
Or jump to Amazon from here to purchase stuff. This gives us a very small referral fee that costs you nothing when you actually purchase qualifying products on amazon.
Recent Comments