Mohogany whaler seats

BestMate

BestMate

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I'm geting ready to re-do my 13 whaler seats, side rails and steering console. The whaler stays in salt water environment for 2 years at a time so the seats get a complete sanding to clean wood every two years.

Once all the old faded wood is removed I use brown mohogany stain to 'richen' the wood color. I use spar urathane applied 3-4 coats.

What are the Boatered gurus thoughts on taking the wood to bare....stain as usual and then use 4 or 5 coats epoxy resin to 'paint' the wood? I'm thinking it'll be a hard finish and last more than 2 years at a time.

comments ???
Stephen
 
Yes, and no.

Epoxy is far more water resistant than the spar varnish, BUT the spar varnish has a large amount of UV protection.

It it were my Whaler, I would:

Sand till "nekkid".

Apply one, coat of the lightest fiberglass cloth with epoxy.

Then apply two/three coats of spar varnish.

Reasoning:

No stain. I happen to like the look of "fresh" mahogany.

Epoxy will prevent water getting to the wood. The single layer of glass will stabilize the brittle epoxy so that the epoxy layer will not crack upon flexing. By using the very light weight/single layer cloth, it will virtually disappear once whetted out.

The spar varnish will now have a very stable foundation upon which to sit, and will provide necessary UV protection to the epoxy.

Note that this is very close to the procedure recommended by Glen-L boats on their "fancy" wood boats.

---

Next refinish could easily be restricted to removing the spar varnish ( ONLY ), ans re-varnishing. This makes the 2nd through Nth refinishing much easier.

At least, that is what I would do to my ( fully exposed to all weather and salt water 365/yr ) Whaler. YMMV.

-edit-

Clear polyurethane -might- look attractive, but is is likely just as pourous as the varnish, and quite likely has much less UV protection. You need the UV protection, regardless of what's underneath.
 
It's not a bad way to go. But if I was going to do it that way I would use the West System epoxy that has UV protection in it and apply at least 6 coats of 2 part poly.

That way I would think it would last 2 years and at the end of 2 years you most likely would just have to sand it down a bit and apply some new coats of poly with out going to bare wood.

Of course if you're getting 2 years now, if you applied twice as many coats of varnish at the start and then added a coat or two once or twice a year, you may not have to strip the wood bare for quite a few years.
 
Strip to bare wood, stain, first coat of varnish thinned by 50% .. second coat thinned 25%, then at least 8 more coats of a good spar varnish.
 
Regular epoxy has no UV protection... Another alternative is to use UV protected clear awlgrip, this is how the strip planked hull of our catboat is finished

Or you can use Bristol over the wood. 2 part, no sanding between coats
 
Pascal is there not a short time frame between the coats of bristol ?
 
A couple coats of Awlspar, Jetspeed, Schooner, whichever varnish color tone you prefer, then several coats of Awl Brite. Mixed and reduced properly it flows out perfectly and can go a long time without recoat but I would recoat every 1.5-2 years for prevention.
 
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