The Old Ways

 (Yes, I know it has been a loonngg time since I added to this blog.  Life.)

I looked back to see, and I don't think I have ever mentioned this topic, so here goes.

As a part of owning Eolian and being responsible for her maintenance and upkeep, the beautiful teak and holly cabin sole needs periodic maintenance - more so in the more frequently traveled areas.  This involves taping off an area, sanding with 220 grit sandpaper to provide "tooth" for the new coat of varnish to grip, and then applying varnish.

Recently, I took on the sole beneath the dinette table - an area that gets scuffed by people getting in and out of the dinette seating - something we do several times a day when aboard.

Here is a pictorial of that trip:

Tape and sand

Apply varnish

Voila!  Pull the tape.

But here is where the "Old Ways" part that I put in the title comes in:

When people are sliding out of the aft dinette seating, just above where this picture was taken, the natural tendency is to place your foot on the edge of the raised sole to assist.  A shiny varnish surface provides no traction for this, and in fact can lead to an awkward slide and fall.  To counteract this, I apply some non-skid to the edge of the raised sole just there.

What kind of non-skid, you rhetorically ask?  Why, I'm happy you asked:  I use salt varnish.  This is a method whose origins are lost in the dusty archives of boating lore...  but it is dead simple and very effective.

• Mask off the area to be treated, apply a fresh coat of varnish.
• Immediately sprinkle salt liberally onto the wet, uncured varnish
• When the varnish is cured, vacuum off the salt, pull the tape, and remove the remaining salt by dissolving it in water using a wet sponge.

Tape, varnish, salt

Easy and effective!

 

One should never disparage the Old Ways - there are some very clever and effective solutions hidden in them!

The Old Ways

Masking: The Problem

Spring fitting out season is approaching (or is already here for those of you south of the 48^th parallel).  That means that there will be painting and varnishing, and where these exist, masking tape is not far behind.  There are all kinds of the stuff out there, and believe me, they are NOT equal, or even close.  Please allow me to give you the benefit of 20 years experience fitting out Eolian, and even longer in masking cars for painting...

Just: No.

There are all kinds of masking tape at the bottom of the rung, cost-wise.  For almost all uses that we here care about, they should be avoided.  The denizens of this rung of the masking ladder, even from a respected manufacturer,  have an inferior backing (that is, they will frequently tear lengthwise wihen you are attempting to pull a piece off the roll...), have an adhesive that is set by the sun, and are worse than useless should they be exposed to moisture (such as dew, on a summer's morning).  If you can get a good piece off the roll, in a day or two in the sun and morning dew, it will be permanently bonded.  You'll need solvents to get it off.  Even for painting a car, where the masking is applied and removed in the same day, the bottom tier is simply not worth it.

Probably No.

The next tier up is useful for things that will be applied and removed in a single day, or where the tape is shaded and protected from moisture (inside perhaps?).  When painting cars, this is what I use to hold the newspaper on the windows, etc.  But not where a clean line is needed.  You probably won't want this anywhere on a boat either.

Maybe.

Scotch's blue "painter's tape" is one that you might consider.  But it has what I consider an overly-aggressive adhesive (it might pull off an underlying paint layer), and also has a tendency to set up in sun or rain.  In addition, like the other tapes mentioned above, it has a "crepe" backing.  That is, the backing is slightly wrinkled on purpose, to make it possible to bend the tape around a curve.  Tho this could be handy in some cases, the wrinkles allow the paint to seep under the edges like this:

Seepage

... so don't use this where you need a clean edge.

The only tape you'll find aboard Eolian is this:

Yes: Scotch 2080

Scotch 2080 (note the orange core).  This tape has,

• A smooth backing, making for nice clean edges
• A less aggressive (but perfectly acceptable) adhesive.  In most cases, it won't lift underlying paint layers.
• An 8-day removal period.  Well, this might be slightly exaggerated, but still, under most circumstances, you won't need a chisel and acetone to get it off.

And a final note:   You use masking tape to prevent getting paint on the substrate.  This means almost by definition that you will be painting over the edge of the masking tape.  When you pull the tape, depending on how heavy the layer of paint is, how strong the paint is, and how well it is cured, you could pull chips or entire areas of paint off into the painted area.  To avoid this, I never allow more than one cured layer of paint on the tape before it is removed.  For example, when varnishing I pull the tape before the second coat has had a chance to set up hard.  This may be a little more work, but it avoids having to use a knife to cut the paint layer (and thus probably scoring the substrate) when pulling the tape.

Masking: The Problem

Got Milk?

I got skunked the other day.

I was at one of the big box home remodeling stores and picked up a gallon of paint thinner, since I was almost out on the boat.  Instead of a metal can or a translucent polypropylene container, it was in a white container.  I didn't give that any thought at all.

Big mistake.

On the boat ready to clean a brush just used for varnishing,  I pulled the DOT seal  and saw...  not at all what I expected.  This was a gallon of milk.  No, seriously - it was an emulsion of paint thinner in water, looking exactly like milk.

Looking more closely at the label (which I should have done in the store), I saw that this was being marketed as "safe" paint thinner.   We Americans will go to any length, to any ridiculous length, to remove any trace of risk, won't we?  But this?  I think this is an EPA-designed thinner, being marketed as "safe".  Of course it is cheaper to manufacture too, since water is less expensive than actual paint thinner.

But tho it is "safe", and has very low VOC, what is it good for?  There is no way I or anyone else would dump this milk into a $60 quart of varnish.  And I wouldn't trust it even to clean my least expensive varnish brush.  I cannot even imagine it being useful as a thinner for water-based varnish, since that stuff is already as runny as milk. 

Kicking myself for my stupidity, I set the container by the marina dumpster.

Maybe someone can use it to make a latte.

Got Milk?

Interior varnish tip

If you have varnished surfaces in your interior, you have probably found that where they are commonly touched the surface has become gummy.  I presume that this is due to skin oils penetrating the surface of the varnish.

I have tried to wipe this gummy surface off with paint thinner before recoating with varnish, but it was ineffective.  Acetone was too effective, softening everything.  And just recoating without removing the gumminess doesn't work either - the gummy surface prevents the new varnish from curing.

So what to do?

And then when wiping down the table after dinner one day, I made a serendipitous discovery.

The ubiquitous scratchy sponge

The fiddles on our saloon table are one of these commonly touched surfaces, and had indeed become gummy to the touch.  As I wiped down the table that nite, I had a brief moment of inspiration (a cosmic ray passed thru my brain?), and I turned the sponge over and vigorously rubbed the soft varnish with the scratchy side of the sponge.  Amazingly, the gumminess was gone!  In some places the gummy layer was deep enough that several round trips of damp sponge side followed by wet sanding with the scratchy side followed by damp sponge were required.  But nowhere did I penetrate the varnish layer.  Even if I had, as a typical zero-cost experiment, that would only have prepped the surface for recoating.

Interior varnish tip

One weekend every year

Five rolls of tape.

1 quart of varnish.

Three days - that's less than 1% of the year - doesn't seem like a lot.  That's what it takes to keep the exterior teak on Eolian gleaming.  It's not so much, is it?  Modern boats have completely eliminated the task by eliminating exterior teak altogether (and interior teak, for that matter).

It doesn't seem like a big committment, except that those three days have to come in summertime conditions, and that they require 100% dedication to the task, and the boat is a complete disaster area until the task is completed.  As I sit typing this evening, my arms have barely the strength to keep at the keyboard.  But Alleluia, it is done.

Here's the drill:

• Day one:
• Tape off the hand rails, the eyebrow, and the caprail.  This involves a lot of wedging of bodies into narrow side deck spaces, on top of non-skid that threatens to non-skid off your skin.  The starboard side of the boat has to be done from the dinghy - especially tiring because of the d#@! laws of physics require every action to have a reaction.  Push against the boat to secure the tape and the dinghy (and you!) scoot away.
• Sand everything with 150 grit sandpaper.  I think that this is the most exhausting part of the whole job.
• Wipe everything down to get the sanding dust off.
• Put on a coat of varnish
•  Go back and clean up any drips
• Day two:
• Put on a coat of varnish.  Ditto on body wedging and skin removal.
• Go back and clean up any drips
• Day three:
• Put on a coat of varnish.  Ditto on body wedging and skin removal.
•  Go back and clean up any drips
• Wait several hours
• Pull the tape.  Ditto on body wedging and skin removal.  Ditto on physics lesson.

It is a dedicated weekend.  If you had anything else planned, you'll be too tired to do it after the day's varnishing tasks are done.

But still, it is less than 1% of the year (albeit more like 5% of the best part of the year).  And you get to make this really neat ball of blue tape at the end. 

And the teak looks nice for another year.

---

After putting this up, I noticed that I had written almost the same post earlier, in 2010.  Except that then I claimed that the work took 4 days.  I guess we're getting more efficient.  Yeah, that's it.

One weekend every year

Water-based varnish?

At nearly $50/quart, marine paints and varnishes are expensive.

And they are worth every penny.

In my dim and barely remembered past, I have used any number of products of lesser cost.  But after using the top tier paints and varnishes, I have learned that using the cheap stuff is a mistake.  The good stuff goes on like thick cream (paint) or honey (varnish).  And it self-levels to a mirror finish.  If you want to get a wonderful look, don't use the cheap stuff.

Recently, in a move motivated perhaps by ease of consumer clean-up, there have appeared in the marine market a collection of water-based products.  These are made by withholding the normal volatile solvents carefully calibrated to give good flow properties on brush application, followed by self-leveling that stops short of sags and runs, and instead emulsifying the neat varnish resin in water.  (For a familiar example, milk is an emulsion of milk fat in water.)

In the interests of science, I tried some water-based varnish.  I can report that the product indeed looks like milk, and goes on just as if you were painting with milk.  It is thin and runny, meaning that it would have taken perhaps three coats to be the equal of one coat of its oil-based cousin.  It was difficult to control on a vertical surface (painting with milk...).  And no surprise here, it raised the grain of the wood, badly.

But my biggest complaint occurred with use on a previously-varnished surface.  After fighting the poor application characteristics, the final cured film was not adhered to the underlying surface.  At all.  I was able to use a fingernail to puncture the film and then lift it off in large sheets.  I ended up removing the whole job and re-doing in oil-based material.

I cannot in good conscience recommend water-based varnish.  In fact, my feelings are stronger than this - I strongly recommend against its use.

Perhaps one of you readers out there has had better luck with water-based materials?  If so, I look forward to hearing about it in the comments.  But fair warning:  if you have never used the $50/quart oil-based materials, your experience does not count for much.

Water-based varnish?

Joy in routine

It is that time of year again.  When all of Eolian's brightwork must be masked off, sanded and another 3 coats of varnish applied.  Yesterday, I began.

And as I did so, I found myself thinking about what is routine, what is drudgery and what is joyful work.  When we first got Eolian, I tackled such tasks with the dedication and gusto that their novelty brought.  Over the years, I have learned, and I have found little ways to make the tasks easier or more effective.  But with each annual repetition of the work (Wait...  You mean I have to do this every year?), I found my motivation draining away.

How to find excitement in the routine?

Standing out there with small pieces of blue tape on my fingers, I had plenty of time to contemplate this.  Here are the inducements I came up with:

• Pride:  When I am done, it will look good, and I will be proud of that.
• Responsibility:  Much like raising children, I signed up for this, and it is my responsibility to get it done
• Fear:  If I let it slide, it will only be more work next year.
• Excitement:  I reached back and snagged that initial excitement that I felt when I did this work for the first time, as a new large boat owner.  Granted, that reach is getting longer - 1997 is pretty far back!
• Mutual encouragement: When Jane is here, we talk about the work, share in the work, and encourage each other to get to it.  Unfortunately, this piece is lacking at the moment, as she is still in Indiana.

And then at that point I noticed that I had finished masking one side of the boat, and that it was 00:beer:30!  So I guess I should add self-distraction to the list above. 

You may not have to re-do your brightwork every year, but you surely have tasks that need to be done routinely and which you'd just as soon skip (waxing the car comes to mind...).  How do you motivate yourself?

Joy in routine

Jilted

The brand of varnish a boat owner uses on brightwork is an intensely personal choice.  Should you be walking down the dock and see someone applying varnish, you may ask what they are are using, but you should never then make a comparison with what you use.  Commenting on someone's varnish choice is akin to commenting on their choice of a spouse.  Whatever thoughts you may have, you must keep them to yourself.

The varnish we have been using on Eolian ever since we came to be responsible for her care is Interlux Gold Spar #95.   I'd like to be able to tell you that we tested 20 brands, talked to everyone on several docks and did intensive internet research before settling on this choice.  I'd like to be able to tell myself that.  But I can't. 

Instead, I chose this brand because it was available; we kind of found each other.  But after living with it for more than a decade, #95 is a choice I have become comfortable with.  It is predictable.  I know how to take advantage of its strengths and how to work with its weaknesses.  

Then last summer as we prepared for the annual brightwork extravaganza, disaster struck.  Good Old #95 was not available, anywhere. 

It was off the shelves.  

It had been... discontinued! 

I literally felt jilted.

I was unprepared to be thrown back into the varnish marketplace.  All I wanted to do was buy a can of Good Old #95 and get to work, but that was just not to be.

First there was denial:  "If we call enough stores, we will find one that stocks #95..."  Nope.

Then anger:  "How could they do this to us?!  We have been loyal customers.  What about all the loyal customers??!"  But of course, this led nowhere.

Finally, we reached a reluctant acceptance.  And we timidly entered the cacophony of the current varnish marketplace.  There were claims: "Smooth!"  "Silky!"  And promises: "One coat will last all year!"  "Applies itself while you sit in the shade and drink a beer!"

But in the end, we went with the recommendation from Varnish Luke* - a guy who flies under the radar, making a living by doing brightwork for folks at Shilshole.  We used Petit Flagship.

It's too soon to tell if this will be a long-term relationship.  Or a one year stand.

* Name changed.

Jilted

Heat gun

Speaking of tools... We were speaking of tools weren't we?   Here is one which you should probably have on your boat:

Yep, a heat gun - kind of like a hair dryer on steroids.  This is a serious tool - the air it delivers is so hot that it will set wood on fire - like all serious tools, you should have a care when using it.

And like many tools, when it is needed, it may only be needed for a few seconds, but oh, what a difference those few seconds can make.

Here are some of the things ours has helped with:

• Formica removal (at the nav station) - heat the Formica enough to soften the contact cement holding it to the wood.
• Head hoses - coat the outside of the fitting and the inside of the head hose with silicone and then heat the hose (carefully, slowly) until it is pliable.   The hose then goes on the fittings *so* easily, and the hose clamps are much more effective at compressing the hose against the fitting.
• Heat a piece of 1" head hose enough to get it over a 1 1/4" fitting - this saved our bacon when an engine hose split under way.
• Heat large-bore shrink tubing for battery cables
• Soften varnish for removal.  Every so often the brightwork demands that you start over with bare wood.  There is a slip-on scraper that comes with the tool (it goes right over the air nozzle), but I prefer to use my own scraper.

You know you want one.

Heat gun

4 Days

It is just 4 days a year. That really doesn't seem like so much of an effort to keep the exterior teak on Eolian spiffy. Yet it seems that every year I go into anxiety attack mode, worrying that we won't get it done. In order to do the brightwork the easy way, we need 4 days of not-rain. In Seattle, that seems to be a major constraint. And 4 days of not-anything-else-pressing. Some years that is harder to come by than not-rain.

The drill is:

• Day 1: Tape and sand
• Day 2: Coat 1
• Day 3: Coat 2
• Day 4: Coat 3 and de-tape

It is only Day 1 that is really onerous. The other days, the commitment is only about 3 hours, most typically first thing in the morning after the dew has come off.

This year, we tried something different (thanks to Jane, aka Wonderful Woman): We did the work at anchor. Aside from Day 1, this only took up time that we would have been lazing around anyway, and again aside from Day 1, we still had the day to use however we saw fit. And by doing the work at anchor, we had easy access to the entire outside of the boat by dinghy, and no docklines to work around. It really was a better arrangement. Thanks Jane!

Jane did the fiddly stuff: the handrails and the "eyebrow". I did the bulk stuff: the caprail. And this year I even took half of the eyebrow down to bare wood and started over, since the varnish had failed on it.

We finished yesterday - and we just barely made it... the pictures I took this morning show that it rained over night.

And, without the task hanging over my head anymore, I feel like a kid on the first day of summer vacation!

4 Days

Cleaning the brush: A Chemical Engineer's perspective

Good varnishing brushes are definitely not cheap! The quickest way to ruin one is to let varnish dry in the brush - not something any of us wants to do.

But cleaning a brush is not an easy task. You may think that after triple-rinsing it in fresh paint thinner, the brush is clean. But put it away for a couple of days, and when you go to use it next, the bristles are  disappointingly stiff.

As a Chemical Engineer, I learned several things that have made brush cleaning a lot easier.  (What?  Practical knowledge?  Who knew?):

• Use a counter-current wash system. This keeps the clean end of the system separate from the contaminated end. In a real chemical plant (for example, an alumina refinery) there would be as many as 10 stages or more. Here we will make it simple - we'll use only two.  Do it like this:
  
  • Save an empty paint thinner container. When you rinse out your brush, dump the now-contaminated solvent into this container. Soon you will have lots in there. As soon as you have enough, this is now your stage 1 rinse.  Squeeze out all the varnish you can from the brush, and then clean it thoroughly in the stage 1 rinse solution. Squeeze out all the stage 1 rinse, and wipe the brush on a rag, trying to absorb as much of the stage 1 rinse as possible. Dump the stage 1 rinse back into the stage 1 container.
  • Next, rinse the brush in 3 small changes of clean solvent. As above, drain all the now contaminated fresh solvent into the stage 1 rinse container, wiping the brush nearly dry between rinses.
  This works because even tho the stage 1 rinse is not pure solvent, it is not very far from it, as compared to the varnish itself. Then the pure solvent is only used to rinse out the stage 1 solvent - not raw varnish. There is a secondary effect: some of the varnish (and paint, and stain, and...) precipitates out in the stage 1 rinse container. When it does so, the stage 1 rinse liquid becomes less contaminated. By doing things this way, your use of fresh solvent will go down considerably, even while your brush gets cleaner.
• Exclude one of the reactants, and a chemical reaction will stop.  Curing paint or varnish is a chemical reaction between the resins in the varnish and the oxygen in the air (and water vapor, if there are urethane resins involved).  Exclude air, and the reactions stop.  This is why varnish does not cure in the can.
• Reaction rates roughly double with every 10° rise in temperature. For our purposes here, the converse is the more valuable: reactions rates are halved for every 10° drop in temperature.

Putting these things to work, on a day when I just need to preserve the brush for tomorrow, I give it a quick but thorough rinse in the stage 1 solvent, getting most of the varnish out of the brush, and then wipe it mostly dry on a rag.

Next, I tightly wrap the brush in aluminum foil - this excludes air and water vapor.

Finally, I store the brush on top of one of the holding plates in our freezer.

I really have no idea how long this process will preserve a brush, but I can set a lower limit.  I have pulled a brush out of the freezer (I forgot it was in there) after a month, and it was still pliable, ready to use.

Cleaning the brush: A Chemical Engineer's perspective

Annual Maintenance: Brightwork, step 3

This morning was perfect varnishing weather. It was dry enough where there was no dew, so I was able to start varnishing very early - while the wood was still cool, and before there was any wind.

I got coat #3 on the port side (shown) and coat #2 on the starboard side. That's it on the port side - it's as good as it is going to get for this year. Tomorrow, I'll get the last coat on the starboard side., and then the caprail will be done for another year.

To keep from going to seed this afternoon, I'll pull the tape off of the port side.

So far, the day's entertainment has been next door. Curtis dropped a key in the water, and so donned his diving gear to retrieve it. Following that, since he was already in the water, he cleaned our speedo transducers and his prop.

Then there was beer.

And then red wine and enough guitar so that I should have quit long ago (at least that what my fingers tell me). I hope the neighbors aren't getting too tired of me working on variations of C, Am, Am7, Bb, F and G. Those of you who know me (and know music) will recognize that as a departure from the blues.

At least I'm playing inside.

Annual Maintenance: Brightwork, step 3

Annual Maintenance: Brightwork, step2

"Your eyes are bigger than your stomach."

Did your mother ever tell you that? Mine sure did. And I wish she could have said it to me when I published, for all the world to see, a wildly ambitious plan for today.

No way.

I started in as soon as the sun had dried the dew, sanding with 150. I sanded, and I sanded, and I sanded. By 4 PM, I had done the whole caprail. And my arms felt like (feel like) lead. There was just no way that I was going to pick up another project. For one thing, the aft deck is already a mess, with the things that have to be gotten out of the way in order to get at the caprail.

It was windy at 4 PM, but not terrible, so I decided to try varnishing. I got a coat on the port side, but by the time I got to the stern, it was blowing 15-20 kt, and the vanish was drying 1/8" behind the brush.

So, I declared the day over, popped a beer, and fired up the grill for a cheeseburger.

And now, I'm blogging :)

Annual Maintenance: Brightwork, step2

Annual Maintenance: Brightwork, step 1

Well, I realize that this brightwork isn't actually all that "bright" - it has too many layers of varnish on it. Three coats per year, for the 11 summers we have been caretakers of Eolian. One these years, we are going to have to "wood" it (take off all the varnish and start over). But not this year - there isn't time. In fact, I have been running behind all year due to the bowsprit replacement.

So far in the evenings this week, I have taped off all of the caprail and the lower "feature strip" - all the way from the bow on the port side to the bow on the starboard side. I have used about 2 1/2 rolls of tape so far. I also need to do the cockpit coaming cap this year. And instead of being out there taping, I am in here blogging and drinking a beer. Whose fault is that?

We use the Scotch #2080 blue tape - it goes on easy, but more importantly, it will come off easy next week, after baking in the sun - even if it gets rained on (perish the thought).

The hardest part is taping the side away from the dock. To do it, I put the dinghy in the water and work from it. But it is an exquisite platform for teaching basic physics principles: every time I apply pressure on the tape going onto the boat, the dinghy slides away from the boat. So it is a constant battle: apply some tape, pull the dinghy back, apply some tape, pull the dinghy back. I spent an entire evening doing the work from the dinghy (starboard side and the stern), and I was sore afterward. From fighting the physics teaching platform.

Tomorrow, I tape the cockpit coaming, and then I start the sanding. Yes, it all needs to be smoothed out and roughed up... I use 150 grit for this first trip around the boat. If I am forced to miss a day between coats (if it rains, perish the thought), then I need to go back and resand everything again to allow for at least a physical bond between coats, if I can't have a chemical bond. For this return sanding I use 220 grit.

But for now, I'm going to finish this beer.

Annual Maintenance: Brightwork, step 1