A Good Stripper

The replacement gunwales that came with the canoe had a coat of varnish. It seemed to be only one or two coats, and applied OK, a few runs, and built up areas. It seemed to be hard, so I'm not sure it was spar varnish. So, you might be thinking that's good, it will protect the wood. There are lots of boats with varnished wood. Yup, that's true, there are. It's called bright work, and is usually a high maintenance item. And it's also a surface coating. It scratches, and wears off, then needs to be re-applied. I happen to like bright work, but for this project it just didn't seem to be worth the future upkeep. SO, I decided to remove the varnish, and treat the wood with Watco Teak Oil. This is a penetrating wood treatment, it goes into the wood, and doesn't build up on the surface, which can cause another problem with fit of the parts.
How to get the varnish off? Since it wasn't too thick, I though it would be easy to sand off. So I got the sanding supplies ready.

I had more sandpaper but you get the idea. And, yes I planned on getting thirsty with the dust flying around. I started hand sanding with 100 grit, didn't want to start too aggressive. After about 6 inches the paper clogged, and didn't do much except to make me tired. So I went to 60, didn't have 80 which I would have preferred. That worked better, it didn't clog until 8 inches. I have 64 FEET to strip. This was going to be tougher than I thought. Time to break out the power. First up, 1/4 sheet pad sander. Same clogging problem. OK then. Lets try the random orbit, 100 grit, the roughest I have, but on the RO, it usually does pretty good. And it did, for a foot and a half, then it clogged and just spun. I used a couple new pads, same story. This will just not due, it took 2 hours to do three feet. This will just not do at all.
Now, where did I get the idea to do this? It seems to be the preferred method that the people on Paddling.net like. Now Paddling .net is an online community of paddlers, both canoe and kayak. No matter what your problem or question, you can get an answer. You'll also get many opinions, there are many ways to skin a cat, as they say. But you will get an answer. The discussions can get heated at times, so it pays to have a thick skin. When you sign up, and I suggest you do if you like paddling, you can list an email address, so you can communicate directly to an other person. It helps when you ask a question and it gets lost in the back and forth (stay tuned for more on that). Many people recommend using Watco oil.
Back to the gunwales. the next day I stopped at my favorite store to get me some chemical paint stripper.
Being that shewhomustbeobeyed uses no pesticides, or other lawn chemicals, like RoundUp to kill the poison ivy, I knew the right stuff to buy was the citrus based stripper. Well, I didn't get that, but I did get water based stuff. And some stripping pads, which are just course, open scouring pads. And some of the blue rubber gloves. The label said it works in 5 -10 minutes, and cleans up with water.
I'm happy to say the stripper worked really well, he gloves, not so good. Ten minutes, and the varnish came off when scrubbed with the pad. Which clogged three quarters he way through the first piece. ARRRGGG. The gloves tore after a few feet, I'm going to use a lot of them. But I decided to POR. After the stripper does it's job, and you scrap/scrub the varnish off, you wash with water. The stuff didn't smell too bad, with no stong ordor. In fact you had to get close to smell it at all. I did two halves one day, and two another. They still need sanding, because the water wash raised the grain of the wood, but it got 99% of the varnish off.
Now I have to sand, and apply a few coats of the oil. Then everything will be ready to install the gunwales.
I took some more pictures with my sons(the Eagle Scout) new camera. I didn't read the manual.

Till next time, fair winds.