Varnish

[bramley]

Hi all

 

My boat is fitted out in a quite nice oak wood all over. 

 

Sadly over 19 years parts of this have started to weather / wear. I’m not entirely sure if or when any varnishing has taken place but I would like to try and tidy up the worn areas.

 

im just a little worried about not making the inside of the boat any darker and I certainly

dont want to add  shine 

 

if I Matt varnished these areas would I still have a colour difference ? Is there any way to get it back to the rest of the boat ? Or would it require sanding back 

 

Apart from a few areas the rest is in lovely condition so ? 

[Alan de Enfield]

The existing varnish is 'bleached' by sunlight - anything you do to 'patch it' will show as a different colour.

The only way to get a colour match is to sand it all back and start again.

 

As a 'bodge' you could do it panel by panel as if a whole panel is slightly different colour to an adjacent panel it won't be quite as obvious as an area in a panel 'touched up'.

[WotEver]

1 hour ago, Alan de Enfield said:

The only way to get a colour match is to sand it all back and start again.

Agreed, but be very careful if any of the panels aren’t solid wood. You don’t want to be sanding through the veneer. 

[Grassman]

27 minutes ago, WotEver said:

Agreed, but be very careful if any of the panels aren’t solid wood. You don’t want to be sanding through the veneer. 

I one did this and it looked so bad I had to replace the whole section of veneer. A very costly mistake.

[blackrose]

When we refurbished Streatley a lot of the varnish was scraped back to wood where water had got under and lifted it, but the varnish that was sound was left. So we did patch repairs and it looked fine. I was working under instruction from a guy who used to work at Freebody wooden boat builders.

 

https://images.app.goo.gl/ms4r4DtpvG5kCvJ5A

 

[bramley]

3 minutes ago, blackrose said:

When we refurbished Streatley a lot of the varnish was scraped back to wood where water had got under and lifted it, but the varnish that was sound was left. So we did patch repairs and it looked fine. I was working under instruction from a guy who used to work at Freebody wooden boat builders.

 

https://images.app.goo.gl/ms4r4DtpvG5kCvJ5A

 

Did you take the varnish back?or stain the areas to match?

 

also many thanks all for the replys 

[blackrose]

20 minutes ago, bramley said:

Did you take the varnish back?or stain the areas to match?

 

also many thanks all for the replys 

 

We didn't use any stain, we just used scraped back the bad varnish with gentle use of a hot air gun this sort of scraper - or just sandpaper in hard to scrape areas. Then feathered the edges of the remaining varnish with a medium/fine grade sandpaper and then revarnished the areas we'd taken back to wood. Yes you could see the repairs if you examined the result, but it looked fine.

 

Edit: Having said that, your varnish looks very thin and I can't see any areas of varnish in your pictures that don't need repair? If that's the case then as others have said, you need to take it all back to wood. If it's all thin then you may need to sand rather than scrape.

 

Edited September 8, 2019 by blackrose