26
« Last post by Nirvana on January 03, 2023, 02:24:07 PM »
I recently refinished the sole in Nirvana, at winter haul removed the whole thing and took it into my shop.
In planning that project I tested several products the prior spring including 2-Parts, Epiphanes and three different Total Boat products. I landed on Epiphanes but I took the whole winter and built a clean room out of 40mil plastic and a box fan with a standard a/c filter for inbound fresh air.
I started with sanding to bare wood, wiping down with denatured alcohol then 3-4 coats of 90% Epiphanes brushing thinner to 10% Epiphanes. This was to get the lacquer to seriously penetrate the teak. After that i gradually increased the ratio. Ultimately I ended at 25% thinner/75% Epiphanes. The higher thinner % helped to allow it to flow better and gave it a very nice shine, but also required lots of coats for build-up.
Because I was working on the sole I wound up putting 16-20 coats, high temps and thinner allow short cure times, sometimes two coats per day, and teak holly ply from Queen Long is manufactured with 3/8 slats of solid wood on top of marine plywood so the minor gaps soaked up a massive amount of lacquer. Yep, it took all winter..
For the hand rails (following year) I used Total Boats Lust because in my testing it was easy to apply (off the boat) and after it sat for several weeks in testing (and after the project) waiting to be installed it became hard as rock and absolutely gorgeous. Very please with it after three years.
Some pics attached.