Staining Your Kayak

Want to add a little extra color to your boat? Here's an essential introduction to working with stain by kayak builder and designer, Nick Schade:

There is no accounting for taste, but for some reason I find okoume a little boring. While the grain can be quite nice, the color can be muted. In my opinion okoume benefits from a little pumping up.

The random colored strips on this Petrel are more unified with a coat of stain

There are also times when I just don’t have a nice selection of wood strips. The tones and colors are all over the place and I’m not in the mood for making a complicated pattern to take full advantage of the variation. In this case I like to do something to unify the colors.

Staining the wood is a logical solution. A little bit of color can enrich boring okoume and even out distracting color variations. However, the stain needs to be compatible with epoxy because all of the wood will end up being covered with fiberglass and encapsulated in epoxy. Typically, traditional woodworking stains (such as MinWax) are oil based. The oils in these stains will repel epoxy. You do not want to use oil based stains in combination with epoxy.

Instead, you want to use a water-based or alcohol-based dye. When the water or alcohol evaporates all that's left is the color. The stain must also be "color-fast." In other words, you don’t want a color that is going to fade or change the moment it is exposed to the bright sun. Many woodworking stains are intended for indoor furniture that doesn't see much direct sunlight, and those can fade quickly.

The best way to apply the stain is with a rag. Old t-shirts are ideal. Clean out the shirt drawer of some of those old 5K race or ugly office “Team-Building” retreat shirts. Cut them up into several 6” x 6” squares. Too big and the rag will soak up too much stain, thus wasting it. Wet the rag with stain by covering the top of the bottle with the rag bundled up into a ball. Wear gloves while applying the stain! Anything that will stain wood will leave your hands a beautiful color for several days.

Start wiping down the wood with quick back-and-forth strokes along the grain. The alcohol evaporates fast, and you'll need to wet the rag frequently. The stain should make the wood wet, carrying the pigment deep into the grain. If you let the rag dry out it will only make a dry smudge on the surface, leaving light spots in the deeper grain pores.

The freshly applied stain will most closely match the finished color while still wet. As the stain dries it will lighten and the color will appear less saturated. Once overcoated with epoxy the rich color will reappear.

The stained wood may also look blotchy. There are several ways to even out the color. One way is to apply another coat of stain. Only do this if you feel the color when the stain was wet was not as dark as you desired. Don’t base this judgment on the dry appearance—as noted above, the dry color is deceiving.

Another option is to wipe the boat with solvent to even out the distribution of pigment. Behlen’s offers a “Reducer” that will lift the color a bit and spread it around, but generic denatured alcohol from the home center will do the same thing. If you don’t want the boat any darker, use a fresh rag instead of the rag you used to apply the stain. The solvent will release any stain in the used rag and shift it onto the wood. It is best to do this solvent wipe-down before the stain has dried as the solvent does not need to work as hard to lift and move the applied stain.

The final, lazy way of making the applied stain more uniform is to apply a seal coat of epoxy. If the stain is still not fully dry, the epoxy will pick up some of the stain and redistribute it. This works with the alcohol-based stain because the solvent is compatible with the epoxy. It will not work as well if the stain has dried completely.

A seal coat of epoxy can help spread out the stain for a more even color.

Staining Stitch-and-Glue Boats

If you are staining a stitch-and-glue plywood boat, you need to apply the stain before any of the wood has been sealed with epoxy. This generally means before you glue scarfs or puzzle joints, i.e. the raw panels right out of the kit box. Clean up the wood with a light sanding of 120 grit sandpaper, sanding with the grain. The sanding is not strictly necessary but does give you a chance to inspect the wood for printing or labels that you don’t want to show.

Sort through your parts, identifying the color you wish to make each piece. Sort each color into a separate pile. Identify the side of the part that should be stained. You don’t want to go through everything only to find that you stained the inside of the front left side hull bottom, instead of the outside! Find a clean surface to work on that you don’t mind getting stained a bit. Use heavy paper to protect the surfaces of your workbenches.

If you are using several colors, start with the lightest color. In this way, if you get any of the color on other parts, the darker color has a better chance of hiding the mistake.

Stain each part, being careful to spread the stain right out to the edge of the part. You may find that the grain of some parts lets the rag slide more easily one way than the other, lift the rag and stroke in the "easier" direction so the grain doesn’t pull bits of lint off the rag.

Store each piece off to the side after it is stained. Don’t stack the parts one atop of the other as this may leave a mark as the stain dries! Also, don’t store the light-colored parts beneath your work area as you apply the darker stains. Drips or splashes will leave permanent marks.

After I’m done staining the plywood I like to protect the color beneath a sealing coat of epoxy. I use a paint roller to apply a thin but uniform coat of epoxy over all the stained surfaces. In this way you will be less likely to scratch off any color later in the boatbuilding process.

After the boat is assembled, you may need to touch up spots where the stain has been sanded off, for example, where the joints between hull panels have been rounded over before fiberglassing. The best way to re-coat these spots is to use a Q-tip as a brush. Only apply stain where stain has actually been removed. If you try to darken light spots caused by sanding epoxy on top of the stain, you will just make a dark spot.

Staining Strip-Planked Boats

I’m often asked if it is possible to stain strips before installing them on the boat. Of course you can, but don’t expect the color to still be there when you are done. The stain does not soak in very deeply at all. One stroke of a plane or sandpaper will remove most of the color. You need to apply the stain as the last step before applying an epoxy seal coat or fiberglass. Finish all of your sanding of the hull and deck and apply stain only as the very last step before fiberglass.

It is really not practical to apply more than one color to the surface. The low viscosity stain will soak under masking tape and bleed across any line you attempt to create. Plan on staining the entire surface of the deck or hull a solid color.

Apply the stain as directed and then proceed to the fiberglass or seal coat as you would have if you weren’t staining.

If you have a feature in the middle of the deck or hull that you don’t want to stain, it may be possible to scrape the stain off certain areas with a razor blade. Since the stain is not very thick on the wood, you don’t need to scrape much, but it isn't practical to scrape large areas of the hull surface.

Selecting Color

As you select your colors t is important to remember that the stain will end up buried beneath several layers of fiberglass, epoxy and varnish. The addition of a clear gloss will alter the color substantially. If you are trying to create a very specific wood color, you should make up test panels with the complete coating schedule—stain, epoxy and fiberglass, and finally several coats of clear varnish. A color that looks good on bare wood may change drastically with the addition of epoxy and then varnish.

Red pigments are notorious for fading, even when using a light-fast stain. I have used red tone stains frequently and really like the result, but if the boat is left outside for extended periods of time, the color will change and fade. (I’m not sure how worked up you should get, as unstained wood will ALSO change color when left in the sun too long.)

The late day sun makes the colors really pop on Dave Lind's S&G Night Heron

Conclusion

Staining is a good way to add a little extra “pop” to your boat. It does complicate the building process. If you are not comfortable in your ability to juggle tricky tasks while working with fast-drying materials, you may be better off sticking to the natural beauty of wood. If you're patient and don’t mind a challenge, the results can be striking.

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