Drop Board Retainers | Varnishing (Postscript)

The Sapele drop board retainers required fresh varnish, as did the Sapele piece which joins the upper and lower acrylic drop boards.

So the first task was to strip them of all the old varnish. Here we are doing so, using the excellent water-based stripper which I used for the hull.

The stripped retainers were sanded back to bare wood.

I then applied eight coats of varnish in line with the Epifanes instructions. This entailed thinning the first three coats with 50%, 25% and 15% thinners respectively, and then five more with 5% thinners.

For whatever reason, this did not go well. I ended up with patches on each retainer where the varnish had not fully soaked into the Sapele. I have no idea why!

So I sanded the varnish back to bare wood and started again, using the same regime.

This time it seemed to go better but I committed the cardinal sin of using varnish which was obviously past its best for the sixth coat rather than open a fresh tin.

Predictably this resulted in a surface like orange peel ... so that was dry sanded by hand with  P220/280/320 and then wet sanded with P400 to get a flat finish before the final two coats were applied. Like this.

I then remembered that I managed to get a superb varnished surface on the transom, and wondered what I had done differently. I checked the blog and found that I had previously thinned all varnish with 10% thinners.

So I used 10% for the seventh and eight coats and guess what? It turned out great! Here they all are.

A long winded but successful project, with drop board retainers now ready to fit.

Postscript 18/6/26

I looked at the retainers a few days later and noticed a few unsightly patches - still.

So with no more ado I wet sanded the show faces with a P400 grit and applied another coat of varnish, thinned with 10% thinners.

Here they are.

This time they really did turn out well. So they are now ready for installation. Hooray!