Soy Strip on failing varnish?

[Dave Jeffery]

Has anyone tried Soy Strip on old varnish that needs removal? Several posts mentioned its possible use on bottom paint but not varnish.

[Russell]

Has anyone tried Soy Strip on old varnish that needs removal? Several posts mentioned its possible use on bottom paint but not varnish.

Never used Soy Strip, cant imagine why it wouldnt work. I have used easy strip though. If you boat is painted though then chemical strippers will cause you more problems then they solve. Ultimately the heat gun and scraper method is the tried and true and best method for removing varnish.

[BillNH]

Can confirm Russell's reply... I've been using it on bottom paint and it works very well. If you use it to strip brightwork then be careful not to get it on any other painted surfaces as it will strip those too! Painted decks or topsides would make Soystrip on the brightwork very risky.

Franmar also makes a product called SoyGel, which is a bit milder than the SoyStrip...

[oldragbaggers]

We just spent 10 days in the boat yard and one of our biggest projects was removing failing, flaking Cetol from the wood. We had used Soy Strip to take the bottom paint off of our CD22 so we thought we'd give it a try.
We used it on the entire toe/rub rail, bowsprit and fantail and that worked great. I did one side at a time and by the time I had applied to stripper to the entire rail, the end where I started was already starting to lift. I used a metal paint scraper to scrape it off and it just came off in nice long strips. We were able to let it fall to the ground for those areas. But for the rest of the wood it was tricky and so we ended up not using it on the wood that was on deck. The reason was that wherever it fell, it left a stain from the Cetol. I could have taken the trouble to tape plastic over the whole deck to catch the scrapings but we were in a sprint to get a kazillion things done in 10 days. Our handrails needed to be rebedded anyway and our eyebrow was literally popping off in some places so we removed those, I did the scraping and sanding off the boat and they were reinstalled and then Cetol. The cockpit and companionway wood was scraped without the stripper and then sanded. It was still several days work for 2 people but our wood is now beautiful again, and with the rail being by far the largest piece of wood on the boat we think using the stripper on that part of it significantly reduced the work.
Good luck with your wood. It feels great to have it looking good again.
(Lance also scarfed in a piece of teak to replace the damaged part of the rub rail. It made him feel great when the boat got back to her slip and someone at the yacht club said "wow, the boatyard really did a nice job of scarfing in that teak on your rubrail"!!)

[Riptide]

One of my tasks to restore my 77 Typhoon has been to repaint my non-skid. The previous owners put on several coats of paint with a ton of sand in it so this was not an easy job. These folks were really scared of slipping off the deck. I started out using Interlux 299e (noxious stuff). I was somewhat satisfied. BTW, my temps were in the mid to high 60s during most of this process. My first attempt was small. I put on a thick coat of Interlux and probably waited 1/2 hour. It hardly touched the paint. I had to use a lot of muscle power to get down to the original light blue non-skid. My next thought was to cover the non skid so I lathered on a liberal amount of Interlux and taped down aluminum foil over the stip. I had read on this board that someone had covered their stip. I waited 1 hour before removing the foil and scraping the paint. This was better. I know if I had followed the scientific method I would have only done one change in my procedure but I wanted to get this job done. Still not as good as I would have liked. It still required a lot of work to scrape off the paint and sand. By this time I'd used up 3/4 of a can of 299e and was still working in the cockpit.

I'll make this story a little shorter and get back to the thread. In my search for a better way I read through this and the Plastic Classic site about Franmar's SS. I ordered up two quarts and when they arrived I re-attacked the non-skid on the deck. I'd recommend Franmar's Soy Strip just for the very fact that the stuff doesn't stink let alone the fact that it cut through the paint "way better" than the 299e. It still took over 2 quarts to see some lightblue and white of the deck but I'm very pleased with Franmar's Soy Strip. I would recommend waiting at least 1/2 hr to scrape the paint. Basically the longer you can wait the better - no longer than 1 hour though. The Soy Strip stays fairly wet. I liked how in the sun how it spread out to a more even coverage - not too thin - but still thick enough to cover the paint surface. Good Luck.

[Dave Jeffery]

A customer service phone rep at Franmar recommended using Soy Gel rather than the more powerful Soy Strip to remove failing varnish on teak. We'll see.

[drb9]

I sent them an email a while back, asking if either product was available in retail stores, but received no answer. Does anyone know the whether this is available other than through their website.

Best,

Darin

[Dave Jeffery]

You could Google it. I found it elsewhere online but didn't look far enough to find a retail outlet.

[Troy Scott]

Lance & Becky,

Which of the Cetol finishes did you choose? I like the natural teak with the clear gloss added. It seems to look the most like real varnish.

[oldragbaggers]

Troy,

We used 3 coats of the original translucent Cetol because we figured it would hide the most imperfections in the old wood. It provided good results for us. I used epoxy to bed a scarf and the translucent stuff gave any joints a brown coloring. I do like the idea of the natural teak or the Cetol light for wood that is pristine. I viewed both of these alternatives on Cetol's website and they looked nice.

Lance

[BillNH]

I sent them an email a while back, asking if either product was available in retail stores, but received no answer. Does anyone know the whether this is available other than through their website.

After a bit of searching, the best prices I found were from an eBay seller and from Franmar direct. Most retail sellers I talked with marked it up a fair bit from there.