BYYB Forums

Put the final epoxy coat on the hull and bottom. It looks so glassy and beautiful. It is a shame it will be painted.

Anyway, on to my question. I will be glassing the exterior of the topside of the boat in the spring (ran out of good weather here in Michigan to finish). I would like to leave a few things glassed and not painted (cabin hatches, rails, bow sprit etc.). Can I just cloth and epoxy it and call it good or will the sun beat it up? I did by some high end interlux varnish for trimwork etc, but I know nothing about comparing varnish to a fiberglassed surfaces. The boat (hopefully) will be covered by a garage or something and will be a trailer sailor.

Glass will not give you any UV protection, you will have to varnish over the glass.

You are going to let all that high dollar paint you bought sit / set all winter. Keep it warm and take it down and shake it periodically or you will get another one of those "lessons". :wink:

That is exactly what I was thinking, but I wasn't sure. Fancy varnish it is!

Thanks for the advice on the paint. I planned on putting inside, but didn't think about shaking it once in a while. Thanks!

definatly apply a varnish to the epoxy to provide UV protection. it will kill you to have to sand the nice epoxy; it will turn a cloudy white and you will think that you have ruined it but fear not, after the varnish goes on it will look better than the epoxy and the more you put on the deeper it will look. it is recommended to apply at least four coats of varnish on bright work and each time you sand it will do the same thing but fear not... each will look better and better. WARNING - DO NOT SPRAY THE FINAL COAT OF VARNISH... READ POSTING HOW FINE IS TO FINE. use a very good bager hair brush, get all of the runs out if you have any prior to the next coat, wait long enough for the varnish to completely dry, wipe it down and hit it again.

Great. That is the approach I will take. Thanks.

Jeff, nice thing about finishing bright is that scratches and abuse don't seem to show up as much as on paint. Varnish seems tougher in my experience tending towards denting more than scratching.

However, and this is a biggie, spar varnish is designed with a self-sacrificing element that provides the protection from the sun's rays. Once that element is all used up then you have no protection. Only then will the varnish start to change color and chip off. If you let it get to this stage to revarnish you have waited much too long and face an uphil battle of sanding off the old varnish and redoing everything. If the varnish is your epoxy's only protection then you might also damage your glass coating. The key to maintaining the bright is to recoat often before it looks like your varnish needs it. On my boats that live on a trailer and generally covered I give it two or three coats once a season with some washing with soap and water as my only prep. If I had varnish on my boat at the slip (I don't thank goodness) then I would recoat twice a year and even that might not be enough.

All of this adds up to why I love paint on trailerable boats that spend most of their time out of the water and no brightwork on my boat that lives on the lake at a slip. For the former, varnish provided needed resistance to dents and dings while on the latter it means too much time and money recoating brightwork. One of the things I love about my MacGregor 26' plastic sailboat is that it has no brightwork or even painted wood on the outside. Scrub brush every once in a while is all I need.

Ahoy Jeff,

A bright finish may not be all that bright.
The finish may be bright enough, but the idea may not be very bright.

Needless to say, I decided to finish bright, but from what Scott Widmier and others are saying, we may never finish this task of bright finishing.

Cool. I was planning on keeping the brighting to a minimum anyway...just trimwork. Thanks for all the feedback... good advice on recoating yearly as well. Thanks again.