Finishing

Finishing is going smoothly, with only a slight detour.

My choice of finish is “bright” for the interior and decks and paint for the hull. There are lots of options for “bright,” and I decided upon one that is closer to work boat than show boat. For a show boat, one can tediously work up to 12 coats of fine varnish. That’s beyond my patience, and I want to get in the water some time this century. Instead, I decided to use Sikkens Marine Cetol, an alkyd resin that builds much faster than varnish. Three coats will do instead of twelve. I know the stuff is tough because I helped my son strip some of it off a rustic swing last summer. Tenacious stuff! Looking back on notes I took while at the Wooden Boat School, I was amused to see that Greg said this about Cetol, “The first coat will scare you.” Yep. It does. The first coat is uneven and blotching from the way the material sinks in. It evens out with additional coats. Cetol has a bit more pigment, resulting in an amber cast that’s not as clear as plain varnish.  The photo shows two coats.

There’s a slight delay for the hull paint. I ordered, and received, it way back in April. One small problem. Wrong color. Kirby is a brand of marine paints that is now being run by the 4th or 5th generation George Kirby. I saw Kirby color chips, real ones, last spring and decided on a color. When I ordered from Jamestown Distributors, I sought out that color … as indicated on the tiny little swatches on their web site. That was a mistake! The swatches Jamestown uses are not correct. Before opening the can, something prodded me to look at Kirby’s online color chart. Ouch, the #37 Permanent Green that I ordered was not the #12 Bottle Green I wanted.

Jamestown’s policy says they will authorize returns within 30 days, but not for certain items, such as paint. Yet, even though this was paint and the order well beyond the 30 day period, they said “send it back.” No questions, no fuss. They have always treated me well, and going beyond the letter of their policy is better than I expected. Thank You Jamestown Distributors. The correct color is on a UPS truck somewhere.

Lesson: Check and double check, maybe even triple check, paint colors and be very careful about what you see on web pages. Going back to those class notes, I found “#12 Bottle Green” as a marginal note.