Moisturizing dry wood
- Thread starter mattyp
- Start date
If you try to sand wet wood it's likely to get fuzzy, and if you sand wood that you've added oil to, the sandpaper will fill quickly and be useless. My choice would be to complete all wood repair and the sanding on dry wood, then add linseed oil/turpentine to the dried out wood just prior to varnishing (& staining) on the inside, and new canvas on the outside. Be really careful while sanding dried wood as it goes away faster than tack heads or new wood, so you can get 'divots' where you don't want them. Tom McCloud
Great. Thanks Mccloud. Now I need to post pictures of damage on the boat. I would guess that leaving as much original wood is the best choice, but I don't know what is important to replace as opposed to repair. For example, I have a thwart that has some cracking, but I think I could glue a dowel to splice the crack...also there are a few planks that appear to have cracked or split....do I replace those or try to use an epoxy to get some strength back? Guess I need to post some pictures...
1905Gerrish
Loves Old Maine canoes
Tom, I would agree with your post above besides oiling before staining the inside of the canoe. The stain will not penetrate if oil is applied before!
Greg Nolan
enthusiast
While most canoe builders, current and past, simply varnish the interior of wood/canvas canoes, Morris stained his canoes with a red-ish/mahogany-ish stain before varnishing.
If you intend to replicate Morris's finish, Denis Kallery devised this recipe for mixing modern stains to approximate the Morris color:
(modern formulation suggested for restoration)
2 parts Minwax Red Mahogany 225
2 parts Minwax Golden Oak 210B
1 part Minwax Special Walnut 224
1 part Minwax Sedona Red 222
Many people, however, do not attempt to match the original stain color, much of which does not survive the weathering a canoe may have suffered, or the varnish stripping that is a usual part of restoration.
Stain applied before oiling will have more effect than stain applied after oiling. Since you are likely to be trying to match color intensity of new wood with old if you stain, some experimentation with scraps would be in order.
Further, if you do intend to oil the interior, consider using tung oil rather than linseed oil. It's somewhat more expensive, but is less likely to discolor or darken over time as linseed oil often does.
Greg
If you intend to replicate Morris's finish, Denis Kallery devised this recipe for mixing modern stains to approximate the Morris color:
(modern formulation suggested for restoration)
2 parts Minwax Red Mahogany 225
2 parts Minwax Golden Oak 210B
1 part Minwax Special Walnut 224
1 part Minwax Sedona Red 222
Many people, however, do not attempt to match the original stain color, much of which does not survive the weathering a canoe may have suffered, or the varnish stripping that is a usual part of restoration.
Stain applied before oiling will have more effect than stain applied after oiling. Since you are likely to be trying to match color intensity of new wood with old if you stain, some experimentation with scraps would be in order.
Further, if you do intend to oil the interior, consider using tung oil rather than linseed oil. It's somewhat more expensive, but is less likely to discolor or darken over time as linseed oil often does.
Greg
SWEETWATER
LOVES Wooden Canoes
I would like to add that when wood is new it is a lot lighter and so it seems people like to stain it to give it an aged look, but the old would cleans up and already has that aged beauty, so just varnishing looks really good. Just my 2 cents
