Re: painting over varnish

Posted by Ken Leffert on Oct 3, 2006

I made the same decision this spring..... and I must say it was the BEST decision I've made all year! I've enjoyed my painted boat this summer more than my furniture grade varnished boat the previous 2 or three summers combined.

I tried to strip all of my varnish, as there doesn't seem to be any good info out there about painting over varnish. In hindsight, that was probably just a lot of unnecessary work & time. If I were doing it again, I'd do just what everyone else is recommending....get it smooth and paint it.

After getting most of my hull nearly completely stripped of varnish, I still had some 'splotches' on half of the the bottom, indicating atleast traces of varnish still left (the stuff's really pretty darn hard to get completely rid of). I decided to leave those as an experiment to see if they would have any adverse reaction under my paint, the other half of the bottom was, I believe, free of varnish. To this date, I can't see any difference between these two halves of the hull. The 'splotches' didn't seem to disagree with the paint at all (I used Kirby's, by the way..... can't say whether other types of paint might react...).

In Response to: painting over varnish by Craig Birrell on Oct 3, 2006

Replies:

• Re: painting over varnish by Karl on Oct 4, 2006
  • I love Kirby Paint! by Ken Leffert on Oct 4, 2006
    • Paint by Ken Leffert on Oct 5, 2006
• Re: painting over varnish by Laszlo on Oct 4, 2006
  • thats a long answer.... by Ken Leffert on Oct 4, 2006
    • Paint or varnish....... by Ken Leffert on Oct 5, 2006
      • Re: Paint or varnish..... by Laszlo on Oct 6, 2006
        • Re: Paint or varnish..... by Ed NY on Oct 7, 2006
          • I only have one..... by Ken Leffert on Oct 8, 2006