To Paint or Varnish The Bulwarks…
Thinking this was a non-issue, and that cruising sensibilities dictate paint would be the obvious choice, I find myself reconsidering the bulwarks. The Sterling 2 part LP paint I ordered and applied to my bowsprit was difficult to use, to put it mildly. The various mixtures, the weather, the application technique, all had to be in alignment, like some cosmic miracle. I painted and re-painted that bowsprit with almost as many coats of paint as I would have with varnish…and it’s still not right. I have nightmares about paint touch-ups with the 2 part LP. Don’t Forget To Vote!
At this point traditional varnish is not an option. However, a 2 part system such as Honey Teak, which I used on my Nor’sea 27, Chamois is looking highly appealing, and will be what I use on the other wood on deck (hatch covers, coamings etc). If a two part varnish holds up as well as a two part paint, then why not varnish? Another option is Petit’s Easypoxy, which seemed to hold up really well aboard the schooner Lewis R. French after a summer of heavy charter work. Duane, a local wooden boat builder swares by floor enamel from the hardware store. He figures, if it’s designed to stand up to heavy foot traffic, it’ll probably do the job for his topsides. Sounds sensible. I’m open to any and all suggestions on varnish and paint alternatives.
So imagine if varnish and paint were equally matched in terms of ease of application, ease of maintenance, longevity, abrasion resistance, UV filters, price etc… what would be the best looking choice for the bulwarks? Here are two BCC’s at anchor, one painted, the other varnished bulwarks.
CAST YOUR VOTE BELOW!
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Maybe try some better technique with the ol Roll and Tip method! http://www.boatbuildercentral.com/help/sterling_roll_tip.htm
I like the photo with the painted bulwarks.
Ooooo. I like the varnish. Without a doubt. I love living on a boat with a lot of beautiful wood.
Teresa
http://sailingsimplicity.com
I used the Petit Easypoxy on some oars and the stuff is like steel. Excellent wear and looks great too.
Rosie, thats a great link there, thanks for that one!
Love the beautiful wood, I second Teresa’s vote. Based on our experience revarnishing/varnishing our floor, yes, absolutely a pain in the tukus, but I’ll tell you, the results look wonderful.
Yeah, no problem. I know you prefer to paint in the blazing sun!
Seatol is the way to go. Has the same look as varnish, with half the work. Can put up to 7 coats on without sanding inbetween
Dutchboy babey… lol Ive been doin some reading and alot of ppl are using simple housepaint for years to paint there boats and from what Im hearing its standing up… and a shitload cheaper and availible in multitude of colours. Lets face it everything attached to the word marine is overpriced…
Hi Ben, without a doubt, the bulwarks and taffrail are a heap of hard back breaking work to keep them up.
There is a third bulwarks look, and that is paint the inside and top bulwarks rail, but varnish the two 2 1/2″ planks. My BCC came this way and I liked it. You may have a photo in your file, already.
I purchased a small Binks detail spray gun and a air brush, and spray painted the bulwarks this way, with a two pak polyurethane (International) and then varnished the two middle bulwark planks.
After the Tsunami damage, I wanted a greater reserve of neglegence. I opted to replace all the deck wood with bare Teak, was very expensive, but now I can manage the maintaince.
I had toyed with the idea of using a polyester “Flocoat” similar to gelcoat for the white, instead of paint. Also covering the two 2 1/2″ planks with wood look formica, but the low maintaince bare Teak won the test.
Douglas
Cetol drives me nuts, personal thing I guess…. Honey Teak is also a no sand/hot coat product. You can do all of it one day… I dig that.
Here’s the thing, I have no idea about any of that boat stuff, however, I can tell you that after this weekends experience with varnish being spilled on my driveway by some bastard neighbor kid… it is EXTREMELY durable on concrete and very likely to never come off. I know that would probably help more if your boat were made of concrete… but if that were the case, this discussion would never have happened in the first place!
Benj Moore Super Spec.
Reasonably priced; really hangs on; easy to refinish.
Formstone! [] [] [] []
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Cetol drives you nuts?!?! Hmmm…no wonder you haven’t visited me on my boat.
Teresa
http://sailingsimplicity.com
Ben,
My favorite BCC bulwarks treatment is may personal favorite. I think you have pictures of the boat on your site. Anyway, I loved how the combination of paint plus a varnished strip on the top of the bulwark looks. Kind of different than the other BCC’s, easier to maintain than 100% varnish, and I think it looks really cool.
Such fun great decisions. Enjoy the boat!
Kevin D
Cetol? I thought you used Dettol!
Got to go with the varnished look. To my eye, you just can’t beat it. By the way, love your blog, Ben.
Hi Ben , an after thought,,,,,, When Mike Anderson was helping to install the new bronze bulwark stanchions, on Calliste ,,,, he reccommended that we fill the horizontal between-plank grooves on the inside of the bulwarks.
He said that it would be much easier to sand and paint in the future,,,,,, so he used epoxy-cabosil mix and filled the inside facing grooves.
He was right, and I never wanted to go back to the groove look. I think you can see this detail on Mike’s website, click on Calliste, photos .
Also, some one reccomended to me to varnish all over the bulwarks, inside and out, then paint over that where ever I wanted the white color,,,,,, the idea was to fill the wood grain with varnish, just incase someone in the future wanted to go back to the all varnish look, with out the trouble of sanding the wood grain clear of the residule white paint, that gets into the wood pores and grain.
BTW, did you help Teresa with her website design ? How much does it cost to have a simple website designed , these days ?
Douglas
Hi Ben,
If you plan to use Elizabeth in the tropics, I strongly recommend you use paint over epoxy sealer. We used varnish on Shaula’s honduras (BCC 59) in the Pacific NW for a decade and got away with a light sanding and a couple of coats once a year. We tried paint on top of varnish for a 2 yr trip to F. Polynesia, and by the time we got back, it was in bad shape. Water gets under the varnish and lifts everything off. It was a big job to strip it all off, seal it with 2 coats of West epoxy, prime it, and finish with 2 coats of enamel. We’ve cruised through the Pacific with this system since 1993, and every 3 yrs or so, give it a light sanding and 2 more coats. Maintaining varnish that is exposed to the sun and seas in the tropics every 2 or 3 months, is not how I want to spend my time. 3 varnished hatches and the tiller are enough.
I agree that filling in the grooves on the bulwark planks with epoxy is the way to go. Otherwise, water gets in to the wood and it expands, breaking the paint along the joins, causing more water to get in.
We’ve started using 1 part LPU rather than enamel a few yrs ago, as International marine enamel was discontinued in Australia. They’ve made 1 part LPU more flexible than it was in the early 90′s, when it was very brittle. I used Sterling on the mast and boom, and it was great on metal, but not very easy to use.
Thanks for a great blog here–the BCC links are outstanding!
Dan
Ahoy Ben, I share your concern about hand painting the mast, especially since I hate to see corrosion starting under the paint and bubbling up with white powder on the aluminum.
Do you think that you can sand the aluminum to and below the deepest pitting on the mast ?
Some of the pits on my mast were just too deep to sand off, so I opted for glass bead blasting, to get the deep pits cleaned out and back to bright metal.
Are you planning to roll and tip a LPU , like instructed in the website that Rosie provided, above ?
I hope that you can find an inside space to do your mast work refinishing.
Douglas
@ Dan & Douglas: I like your ideas. The epoxy filler between the horizontal boards sounds good, I like the idea on both sides. I Was thinking about doing a penetrating epoxy sealer, then single part LPU like Easypoxy. Dan what 1 part LPU do you use?
Not sure I can find a place to bead blast my mast locally… tough spots are the welds…
Thanks for all the great ideas here on this one. Can’t wait to haul, and begin working on the boat again. Praying for a warm winter, so I can keep working through it as much as possible.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Whoops……
Just thought I would mention that the boat shown as the “varnished” BCC is actually Mike Pearson’s Metaphora. Mike is a dedicated Cetol guy whose boat always looks GREAT.
Wayne, thanks for the heads up on the Cetol there… would love to see the boat close up, I might change my opinion of the Cetol, she sure is pretty.
Hi Ben,
We’ve been out of the States since 1993 (until this year), so I’ve been using NZ and Oz paints. When Interlux (International here in the States) quit making marine enamel, we started using Marine Coat, their ‘modified-urethane’ (1 part) paint. About 4 yrs ago, they dropped Marine Coat, and we were left with their Brightsides 1 part polyurethane.
In the early 90′s, I did a little experiment. I got small cans of Easypoxy, Brightsides, and marine enamel, and put a couple of coats on a piece of plastic dropcloth. After a month of drying, I peeled the paint off and checked it for flexibility. The first 2 were VERY brittle, but the oil based enamel was like a flexible piece of leather! I tried this last year with Brightsides and Marine Coat, and they were both flexible! So, they’ve changed the paint, and it’s much improved. Although the old marine enamel came in the right color, I’ve had to mix white with some buff (carefully measured), and that has worked well and is reproducable.
We’ve always repainted while in a marina berth, not hauled out, and brushing rather than spraying has that advantage. I wet-sand with 120 grit before painting, using a bucket of water to sponge off the sandpaper. The paint settles to the bottom of the bucket overnight, so that the clear water can be tipped out and the paint particles thrown in the trash.
When I repainted the spars in NZ, I used chemical stripper to remove all the paint. It gets into all the corrision pits and really cleans things up. The fumes ARE toxic, so you want to work outdoors with a bit of breeze. It also eats gelcoat, so you have to mask off any adjacent gelcoat. Since you used Sterling on your bowsprit, you know how toxic the 2 part paints are–a good face mask is essential.
Dan
I asked some fishing guys and they use glidden porch and floor paint. Its a 1 part polyurethane. Also a guy on the Pacific Seacraft board swears buy it.