Sam Llewellyn
Is traditional varnish the only brightwork option?
Wood. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it either. But we are stuck with it, because the new-to-me Drascombe Lugger in front of the workshop is made of the stuff. Most of it is painted – boat enamel on the hull, deck paint on the deck, Danboline in the bilges. There is also, however, a certain amount of what was once brightwork to think about.
And there is plenty of thinking to do. The brightwork is iroko, weathered to a not unattractive dove-grey. But dove-grey does not quite cut it in the home fleet. So it was out with the orbital sander and on with the mask, the earphones, the metal music and the glasspaper of diminishing coarsenesses. And lo, there was in the land a great buzzing and clouds of dust from which emanated coughing and swearing. A day later there emerged from the cloud rails, strakes and centreboard case top surfaces clean, reddish and shining, and lo, they were good. But the weather would arrive, and they would not stay good for long. A sense of emergency screeched into the mind, pulled a handbrake turn and stood there steaming. There were options to consider.
Option 1 was to leave it alone. The boat will live in the open air on its mooring, though. Bare wood on a mooring turns first dove grey, see above, then an unattractive shade of dirty black, then a nasty greenish beige, and then disintegrates. Nope. Leaving it alone was not an option.
Option 2 was to slather it with sophisticated breathable miracle gunks. Most of these seem to be some sort of chemical muck suspended in water, and have two problems. One, they do not respond well to everyday erosions like children hammering on them with their tiny spades, or lobster pots being hauled across them. And two, some of them, no names no pack drill, will in the fullness of time turn a vile dull black removable only by hanks of steel wool soaked in petrol; and even when after hours of scrubbing they consent to come off, little bits of steel wool may be left in the timber, where they go rusty and spackle whatever finish you have applied with a nasty venereal-looking pox. Some people swear by such gunks.
We swear at, not by.
Option 3. Miracle space age gunks that turn to diamond-hard coatings as used in spacecraft. Epoxy, God bless it, is splendid stuff, penetrating wood and forming a fine barrier that is nearly impossible to soak or abrade, and which will go milky when the UV gets at it, and which you will therefore have to protect with varnish. One-part varnish, applied to epoxy, may remain tacky for longer than you wish, like for instance a couple of months. Two-part varnish, see Option 4 below. And there is always a suspicion that epoxy on brightwork is somehow, in some way, well... cheating.
Option 4. Two-part varnish. Hard to abrade, very little recoating. Though if it gets chipped and a bit of moisture finds its way under, the varnish will come off in great plasticky sheets, leaving bare wood, which will go black with trapped wet and need bleaching with oxalic acid, one of the few really deadly poisons available at keen prices on ebay, but actually no fun at all.
Option 5. Tar. Looks awful, smells worse, but will protect the wood, as long as you remember that there is some wood somewhere under all that cracked black muck. Obsolete, thank God.
Option 6. Traditional or semitraditional varnish. I know, I know. Twelve coats minimum, sand between each, though cheats like me can use Epifanes Rapidclear to build up the layers, because Rapidclear doesn’t need sanding, and finish off with a high-gloss high quality traditional varnish containing plenty of tung oil, thinning 10% for easy flow and sanding with 320 grit between each coat, being careful to use a superior thinner, not Barretine, which is somewhat adulterated and may impede drying, see above. Take a deep breath and a good brush. Mm, smells good. Do it.
Using Option 6. Twelve days of brushing and sanding and tackragging later all that brightwork will look as it if has been dipped in honey, and feel as hard as glass but a lot less fragile. Any dings will be easily patchable. And in the next lockdown someone will have the inestimable joy of taking the whole lot off, and applying their own solution. Which with any luck will be Option 6.
‘Epoxy is splendid stuff... which will go milky when the UV gets at it’