Varnish is a very repetitive process and it requires a LOT of patience which I have very little of. These projects try my very last bit of sanity, but I got it all done over several weeks. Over the years, we have put oil and stain on our exterior teak wood. We have teak on our 2 cockpit hatches, 6 steps on the sugar scoops, hand rails along the cabin top, rails on all 4 sides of the bimini, 2 princess seats, and 8 pieces in the cockpit. Lots of teak. If you are a cruiser, you will notice I did not mention the teak toe rail as there is no way in he!! I will touch those.
Matt has wanted to varnish the wood for a long time and every time I go to stain or oil any of the teak he complains. So, I finally agree to try my hand at varnishing.
Varnish / Awl Wood
We have talked about varnishing some of our teak pieces for years. But varnishing is time consuming and takes a lot of patience (which I don’t have). Now that we are in the yard and we removed the bimini hand rail and the cabin top hand rails we’ve decided it was time to give it a whirl.
Project 1 of 3 Varnishing Projects are the (2) hand rails that run along our cabin top (about 12′ or 3.5m), (2) aft bimini rails and a flag pole.
Sanding, Sanding, and More Sanding
The first step is sanding several times with 80 grit then sanding several more times until all of the old stain and groves are gone. Then you follow it up with more sanding using 120 grit sand paper which smoothes the surface further.
Removal of All Dust Particles
Then I wipe everything down with MEK (some heavy duty nasty stuff to remove the dust particles).
Primer
Next step I apply Awl Grip / Awl Wood Primer. The yard informed me that I should be using a new bucket and brush for each step and each coat, so I did (seems wasteful).
The primer goes on smoothly and turns the wood a rich, beautiful color. This is a clear primer so we were surprised at how dark it made the wood. Can you see the long cabin hand rails hanging from the metal boat support?
Applying Awlwood Gloss
Once the primer was dry (24hrs) I applied the first coat of Awlwood gloss. You can either apply one coat each 24hrs and then sand down, apply MEK, then apply 2nd coat or you can try multi coating in a single day. Guess which one I tried — multi-coating (lack of patience, remember). I was only able to apply 2 coats in the first day. So, the next day I had to hand sand each piece with 320 grit paper before starting the next 3 coats.
Once these dry for 24 hours I sanded them all again with 600 grit paper and put on the final 6th coat.
Project 2: More Varnishing
I also varnished the (2) cockpit handholds, two teak hatch frames, and the teak on both helm seats. There were years of layers of stain on these pieces of wood. I would do a light sanding before staining, but they had not been taken down to the raw wood in ages.
And now they are beautiful and shiny. For some reason the wood looks more red than it is in realy life. The wood color is more like the lower left photo.
You’ve Got to Be Kidding?
One day after Matt installed our beautiful new varnished hand rails along the cabin top, I stop to take a photo and notice something horrible! The teak around the sides and front of the bimini are simply awful looking with old stain. And on top of that the small teak rail along the cabin top (just below it) looked crappy too. And since I had the varnish out again, we decided to do the two princess seats and the teak backing to our wench handle holders. Great, varnish project #3! Keep in mind it started out with one piece and now has blossomed into 18 pieces!
The teak rail along the bimini top can’t be removed (unlike the aft portion of the rail) so it makes it very difficult to sand. Most of it has to be done by hand. This is the same case for the rail along the cabin top. This project has truly destroyed my hands, nails, and back! I am upside down a lot trying to get the pieces that are seen from the cockpit.
I was so irritated that I started sanding without taking any before photos, but trust me the wood needed either stain or varnish.
Sanding
Man oh man this was difficult to sand these pieces. Most of the trim was near our non-skid (which really hurts the hands when you hit it), gelcoat which scratches easily from the sand paper, a metal rail (painful on the hands) and or screws, bolts, knobs. You can see from the top photo that the bimini rail and the small rail below it had to be varnished to match the beautiful hand rails along the cabin top.
The two princess seats really need new teak but it is not in the cards yet. Maybe when we get to Indonesia. So, we sand down the old stain and do our best to make these seats look better. Here is the raw wood.
Back to the Process
A good swipe of MEK is applied to remove all dust particles and anything that might muck up the varnish. Primer is applied and then 24hrs later the varnish process begins. Awlgrip’s product Awlwood allows you to either multi-coat or apply one coat every 24hrs with a sanding in between coats. I couldn’t possibly sand 6 more times. So I decided to try multi-coating again which only requires 2 more sanding sessions.
The end product came out nice, not my favorite and certainly not my best work, but it will do for now. I am not a varnish person. I don’t like doing it and I am not a fan of the end result. But Matt likes it so there is that. Just not sure who will redo all of this in 5 years when it starts to look ratty???
The front section that is flat was fairly easy to do despite the non-skid and gel coat issues. But the insde was tricky with the rails, the ledges, the uneven surfaces. You see this from the inside of the cockpit (bottom right photo). This kept getting loads of bubbles which required more sanding. Truly a beastly job.
After what seemed like months of sanding and varnishing (it reality it was weeks), everything has been varnished (except the toe rails).
Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind actual live events. This blog occured in early December while we were on the hard in Norsand Boatyard. Don’t miss out on some of the beastly projects we got completed in the yard in our last blog post.
