Painting the brightwork: a heresy?

[Dave Jeffery]

Has anyone painted brightwork with paint (not Cetol, oils, etc., much less varnish)? I imagine a dark red might look pretty good, if somewhat odd.

If you did paint it, would you use a one-part polyurethane, exterior acrylic house paint, or what?

Do you think painting would decrease maintenance or increase it?

[Jim Davis]

Well in the "Good Old Days" commercial vessels painted almost everything, usually black for the rails. Yachts with britework would often paint the varnish brown before heading to the tropics. This involved building a good base of varnish before painting so the crew (paid of course) would have an easier time prettifying before the yacht returned to the home yacht club.

[Wayne Grenier]

I have had excellent results clear coating oak trim for my kitchen and bathroom with west system epoxy-I actually sanded down a scrap piece of teak and clear coated it and the results were very good-I wonder what I would be accused of if I did it to the teak on the boat? It looks like varnish and maybe a permanent treatment? maybe I'll experiment with epoxy over varnish? has anyone els ever thought of this?

[Oswego John]

Wayne,

I'm no chemist, far from being one. I think that I heard or read once that epoxy won't stand up to UV rays and will break down prematurely. Maybe not. It's worth looking in to.

Good luck,
O J

[S/V Necessity]

The epoxy wont hold up to the UV, However I have a friend who has had good results with putting varnish OVER epoxy on his brightwork. Make sure you use a varnish with UV inhibitors.

[BillNH]

The epoxy wont hold up to the UV, However I have a friend who has had good results with putting varnish OVER epoxy on his brightwork. Make sure you use a varnish with UV inhibitors.

This is the way natural finish wooden spars are built up... epoxy for the structural bonding and then varnish w/ UV inhibitors to protect the epoxy...

[Ed Haley]

If you put epoxy on prepared wood before painting or varnishing, after the epoxy hardens be sure to wash the "blush" off the epoxy with soapy water. Then after drying the epoxy, rough it up lightly with 100 grit sandpaper before painting or varnishing. If you don't wash and sand, whatever you put on the epoxy will soon peel off and then you're back to square one.

The epoxy will also prevent the varnish from showing off the grain of the wood. The grain will appear flat. I would test it out on some sample wood to see if you like it first.

Good luck.

[Derek Matheson]

I used West System 105 resin with 207 hardener on our dinghy, spars, seats, planks, etc. Came out great, clear with very little darkening. The 206 hardener darkens the grain a bit. Even though the 207 contains UV inhibitors, West suggests overcoating with a good varnish with UV inhibitors. I plan to use Cetol light.
Pine seats:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/owleng/2505448553/" title="IMG_0884 by owleng, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2312/250 ... fa5d4c.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="IMG_0884" /></a>
Mahogany rails:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/owleng/2505442973/" title="IMG_0880 by owleng, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3036/250 ... 902eeb.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="IMG_0880" /></a>

If you think this stuff is easy to use - forget it. It doesn't set up for about 4 - 8 hours. Horizontal surfaces are OK, but vertical surfaces not. It will all run down the surface and cause many drips. I put it on with a paint brush, and you need to wipe the brush vertically, and plan on it dripping off. If I were to do any of the big boat teak like this, I would not do it on the boat, but bring it home. Then use the epoxy as an undercoat, sand smooth, recoat with epoxy, sand smooth, then 2 coats of Cetol. The epoxy is tough and abrasion resistant.

[John Laton]

A few years ago I was 'advised' to try just several coats of west 2 part epoxy on the oak rub rail trim of my dink by someone who had just done his teak in this..so first hand I'll second both the ease of drips and can confirm that UV breakdown was only a short season away.

John
CD25D
#55

[Dave Jeffery]

Anyone got thoughts on the original question...painting brightwork with paint?

[Bill Goldsmith]

Seems to me that it's not the most popular approach, but if you want to try it, start with a smaller piece first, to see if you like it. I doubt it would reduce your maintenance very much (if at all), because wood moves and you would need to reapply with some regularity. As with varnish or cetol, you can always scrape it off if you don't like it.

[S/V Necessity]

I've also broached the subject of painting the toe rails with my significant other. We are currently restoring our CD28 and the toe rails are off, and busted badly in a few places. So I have the options of making new pretty ones, trying to repair the existing ones to satisfaction. Or just sticking the old ones back on, and using copius amounts of filler and covering the whole fiasco up with a thick (albeit pretty!) coat of paint.

SWMBO has stated that I better figure out how to expertly repair or make new. We didn't get a cape dory to have painted toe rails, she wants *SOME* teak!

I think I will be patching the old ones up as best as possible, but I did toss the idea of painting around for a little bit....

[Jim Davis]

If you decide to paint I will recommend that you use old fashioned Rustoleum. The standard oil base version. It does much better than any of the polyurethanes (Brightsides, Etc) on wood. Old fashioned oil enamels remain flexible and can breathe a little bit. As with varnish the first couple coats should be thinned for penetration, or you can use a primer like Kilz 2. As to saving work in keeping the appearance, you probably will save a little, but if water gets under the paint it is the same as with varnish - scrape, sand and redo. Should your Chief of Staff change your mind later you will really have a job in getting all the old paint out of the grain. That is not a job you want ladies, children or preachers in the neighborhood for.

If you look at the photo in the Avatar for this message, she is all wood except the hull. We use a quart of varnish and at least two quarts of paint a year.

[Al Levesque]

I remember well the very common practice of painting all woodwork a brown color. These weren't yachts but people got a lot of boating out of them. I didn't pay attention to the composition of the paint but I think it was called trim paint. I think there were only oil based paints available at the time. Rails were made of oak and seemed to hold the paint well. It looked pretty good alongside the buff colored deck paint on the canvas covered decks. Everything was painted once a year until it got so thick you had to do the blowtorch thing to scrape down to the bare wood. That was the same for most other surfaces too. I don't think I want to go back there.

[Oswego John]

Can you stand to hear some stories about painting boats and life in a boat shop in earlier times?

Many boats were painted. In my memory, the only boats that had varnished brightwork were boats owned by the wealthy. I can't remember ever seeing a workboat with varnish on it.

I used to love to come home from school, change my good overalls for my work overalls and help out until supper was ready. When you first opened the door to the workshop and walked in, you thought you were in heaven. An early day boatshop had the greatest smells in the world. When I smelled fresh sawn cedar, I thought I was in heaven.

Before the war, (WW II) there was no such thing as Cetol or any other such make believe varnish. What you got a whiff of was an ambrosia of lacquer, paint, turpentine, pitch, (we made our own tarred marlin), paint, raw and boiled linseed oil, creosote and a host of other great chemicals. The most overpowering of those delightful perfumes was of those that were being used that day on any given project.

To wander from the subject at hand for a moment, I'm sure that a good many of you knew what I was talking about when I mentioned overalls. Every kid wore them. You owned two pairs, one for school and one for work and chores. I had to wear knickers (yuck) to church on Sunday. A boy of that era also owned a prize possession called "high cuts". I don't expect any reader to recognize what I mean by them. Click on:

www.oleyland.on.ca/images/product/high_cuts.htm - 15k

The pictures don't do them justice. A real all-American boys high cuts were fully 4" higher. Just below the right knee on the outside was a sewn in leather pocket with a snap cover for your pocket knife. No kid worth his salt didn't carry a knife, own a dog (mutt) and have a bean shooter (Sling shot) hanging out of his back pocket. When he was twelve, he was taught to handle a .22 rifle.

But I digress again. Probably the colors most boats were painted were white and battle ship grey, with buff trim. Buff was any shade you wanted it to be, it was usually a mixture of whatever paints were left over. If I had to describe it, I might say that it was light orangey, with a touch of tan and maybe a smidgen of yellow or umber thrown in. We were always warned to mix enough, it was a bugger to match if you ran short.

In those days, there was no such thing as latex or water based boat paint. Every thing was oil base. Fiberglass and gelcoat were only a dream in some scientist's head. I don't remember having used plywood. There was no such thing as treated lumber. You treated it yourself. The way you waterproofed a deck or coach roof was to stretch dry canvas across it, tack it in place with copper carpet tacks, then hose it down. When it dried, it shrank nice and taut. Then you broke out a new batch of buff paint to cover it up.

Rustoleum paint was, in comparison, a new kid on the block. The story goes that it was formulated primarily for just as its name implies, to treat rusted metal. I have no clue what is in it today, but when I first used it, the manufacturers said that it was made with fish oil which let it penetrate through any rust and scale to bond better with the base metal. Whatever is in it today, it is great paint and I use it for wood, metal, man made material and everything that needs painting.

I'm reminiscing too much again, so I'll close with this last bit of whatever you want to call it.

The only clear coats that we ever used in the shop were lacquer and varnish. Today, I think that the lacquer is man made. The lacquer of an early age was made of compressed lac bugs' juice. The early lacquer had the most wonderful odor. Today, it is noxious and you should use a breathing filter.

There was only one varnish that we ever used. It was called McCloskey's Man-O-War. My father told me that he used it when he was a boy. I think that it has been around since the mid 1800's. I haven't tried lately, but I was told that it is still available. Never mind space age science. When I was using that stuff, I truly believed that the moon was made of blue cheese. (Maybe, today, it is made of processed cheese,)

So Dave, after all my yada yada, yes, you can paint your brightwork.

I promise to be more candid, next time.
O J