Decided to go with the Rustoleum series of Marine Coatings for the planking and stringers. We first wanted to see if the planks would take sealer/varnish evenly and there was a slim chance to leave the inside finished bright. Lots of challenges there, with scarf joints and some blobs of excess epoxy in a few places. We also have a fallback plan to paint with some nice colors if the planks didn't darken evenly. Sealing the wood with a varnish was the first step either way.
So per Rustoleum's instructions we applied the varnish, thinned 10% with mineral spirits. And here are the results. As I thought, there are some big variations in the plank colors, as we drew from 3 batches of plywood. The scarf joints didn't bother me, but the eyes stops on too many of those plank transitions. Also the epoxy shows up an opaque amber in a few too many spots.
So we will paint. Rustoleum Marine Coatings Wood and Fiberglass Primer next, then we will use Rustoleum Topside Oyster White, which is actually what is on the outer hull. We like the paint and varnish combo, but we will have to figure out something different for our inner transom, it might get painted as well due to color variations on the frame and plywood face.
We are excited about this combo, thanks to the designer Arch Davis, who sent us a nice photo of one of his favorite completed boats, built by Mr Ahlberg.
Click here for the the rest of St. Jacques' story.
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