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Thanksgiving Day - First step is to remove the old varnish with my Makita heat gun and Pro-Prep scraper. Both excellent tools for stripping.
I will end up stripping all of the old varnish off of every part of the boat - eventually.
Once all the varnish is off, I sand the mahogany plywood with 220 and then apply some tung oil mixture , commercially available from WATCO or sometimes, I make my own with boiled linseed oil and tung oil. Either way, I thin it about 30% with mineral spirits.
Next step is to sand the second coat of oil into the mahogany with some 600 grit, this will give it a nice glow and fill the pores with very fine mahogany sanding dust. I learned this method from Rebecca Wittman's book Brightwork.
After sanding in the tung oil, I wipe off the excess oil with a dry rag and wait for it to dry, in this cold and humidity, easily a month. Plenty to do while the oil dries.
Above - the sanded oil finish really brings out the grain and darkens the wood a bit, which I like. I don't like light mahogany for some reason.
November 24 - Next I decide to replace the splash boards because I don't like the cutout in the center. I also want to insert a piece of mahogany as a kingplank in the center of the foredeck to hide the center plywood joint.
So, the splashboards come off and I make a couple of new ones.
The center joint is a tricky three-way bevel, but I somehow pull it off without having to trash a set of boards. Even a blind squirrel finds nut occasionally!
November 25, 2006
Next step is to cut out a shallow rebate in the center of the foredeck where the splice is. I use my circular saw to cut two grooves spaced equidistant along the center, then make a few cuts between them to facilitate chiseling out the wood. I left the old varnish on this part of the deck to keep the plywood veneer from splintering up when sawing the kerfs.
I don't cut all the way though the plywood, just about .080" deep, just enough to accept a piece of mahogany cut to the width of the rebate, acting as a kingplank and hiding the joint underneath.
Piece of new mahogany, cut to width and, bellow, cut to height. Next step is to epoxy it in place with some West System goop.
Below - 22 December, 2006 and I mask off the location of the splash boards to keep the epoxy mess to a minimum.
I glue the two splash boards together first and clamp them together at the correct angle.
I apply some thickened epoxy to the bottom of the splash boards and screw them down from underneath the deck with stainless steel screws.
Below, after they are fastened in place and the excess epoxy is scraped off, I remove the masking tape.
Next, I'll strip the remainder of the decks with the heat gun and scraper and apply some Epifanes varnish.
Below - April 14, 2007, after a week off dedicated to refinishing the Wayfarer, much progress has been made.
Five coats of varnish so far, sanding with 240 between coats. Four more coats to go.
Below - the mast was stripped and coated with epoxy, next a few coats of varnish and this boat will be ready for hardware reinstallation.
Below - May 17, 2007 - The eighth or 15th coat of varnish goes on. I've lost count.
I took the Wayfarer off the trailer so I could refurbish the trailer. The mast is varnished and now I'm working on the boom, not much left to do but put all the hardware back on.
 
 
 
Below - May 23, 2007 - I completely rebuilt the trailer, removed all of the rust, replaced the bunk brackets, all of the hardware, metal-prepped and repainted the whole thing. Then I added a new keel roller in the front and a new keel roller in the back where there wasn't one before. The lack of an aft keel roller caused the frame failures described on the repair page . You can see the new aft roller structure in the photo below. I blocked it up temporarily while I repainted the hull where I had to replace the frame screws.
 
 
Bilge painted with EasyPoxy Off-White.
Varnishing pretty much done, next I'll polish the brightwork with some Menzerna Final Polish II and reinstall all of the rigging hardware.