Wednesday 12 February 2020

Varnishing the transom

One of the problems with stopping building the boat for a few years is that some bits haven’t aged as well as I’d like. Principally the transom.

Essentially I built this by laminating thick Jarrah planks on to 6mm ply, then hacking at the Jarrah to thin it out to ~6mm. When working on the boat originally I threw a quick coat of unthickened epoxy on to protect it, and went on to other bits.

So that’s how it’s sat for rather a while. Now that the decks are painted out it’s time to varnish it. Unfortunately it’s gone and cracked while sitting. So before varnishing I fed some unthickened epoxy into the cracks to fill them, then sanded the whole lot back to timber before applying another couple of coats of epoxy with the roller.

This is what it looks like after a couple of coats of epoxy. I’m confident the cracks won’t be a problem (after all, they’re only a veneer, so it’s still completely watertight), and it looks okay, cracks and all.

I also bought a gudgeon and pintle for mounting the rudder, but alas the wrong one arrived, so it’ll be a little while before I go drilling holes into the transom to stick more bits on.

And here's what it looks like after sanding back the epoxy and adding two coats of lacquer, thinned out with Penetrol. I'll sand out the gloss before adding another couple of coats.

No comments: