Cetol and 2 Part Polyurethane Varnish

[minaret]

Originally Posted by Capt.Don

To use Awlbrite Awlclear, do you have to apply to bare wood or can this be applied over/sanded varnish?

Thanks
Don

Either. If used as a varnish system by itself it looks a little starnge, it has no tint at all. Dead clear. It also does not last as long by itself because it is very stiff and brittle, so it tendes to fail at joints fairly early. But if you apply it over Awlbrite, as intended, the sysyem as a whole works great. The traditional varnish underneath provides color and depth, as well as flexibilty. Basically it provides the desired look. Then the urethane over the top preserves the varnish with it's much higher UV resistance and scratch resistance, while also providing a higher level of gloss than any varnish. Like I said it's a method which has been used by very high end brightworkers for many years, Awlgrip's system just makes it easier to do. Much easier.

[minaret]

Originally Posted by conachair

I've never had much of a problem going over older cetol. It seems to wear rather than peel. So long as it's the same tint anyway. Is there an out of the way bit you could try?

Funnily, was chatting to neighbor liveaboard this morning about cetol. We concluded that cruisers with a bit of a masochistic streak, or with a bit of a sadistic streak and staff, used varnish outside. The rest of us use cetol

Bristol, Rivole, HoneyTeak and other similar products are all a disaster IMHE. I've had much better results with varnish/urethane combo's, but it is a lot of work.

[s/v Beth]

I have Interlux's "Pefection Plus". It looks like it works the same as Awlgrip's system- but it says I can apply it directly to wood or use a clear wood sealer. It sounds to me like that this is suddenly a good idea. I had some of this on my boat and it only lasted a year. Now I think I know why.
Has anyone used this product and knows how it compares to Awlgrip's?

[conachair]

Originally Posted by minaret

Bristol, Rivole, HoneyTeak and other similar products are all a disaster IMHE. I've had much better results with varnish/urethane combo's, but it is a lot of work.

Haven't even heard of any of those so can't comment.

Are we all talking about the same cetol here?

This is what has a lot of fans in the UK. I used it in the tropics as well, not mirror finish but looks OK, lasts well and low maintenance.

Buy International Paints SIKKENS CETOL MARINE 750ML Varnishes at Marine Megastore Chandlery 15% off orders over £300!*

[Pblais]

In all products you are obligated to do something each year. Awlbrite wants 10 coats but you can machine buff it to a very smooth gloss. You can patch it for a lot of years. It takes a bit of practice and costs $78 / quart. You mix it and has a pot life of about 2 hours more or less. You do need a light sand and a top coat on some regular basis depending on where you keep the boat. Cetol needs this too and after some years the lower layers go dark and start to look like crap. The old "marine" and "Light" colors suck. The newer "natural teak" is more brown less orange and looks better. I use it in places that are covered.

I was using TeaQua. Its water based and comes off with teak cleaner and holds up about one season and you can recoat for the second but it needs to come off eventually as it holds dirt. My little electric power washer takers the bulk of it off so it's easy. We have an oil refinery and a coal power plant near - they suck but are both closing down this year. Teaqua seems to have gone belly up.

Semco has a "light" product that is really pretty good for teak decks. It's very watery going on and comes off with teak cleaner. We only have teak deck in the cockpit and it is nice when you "spill" stuff - even red wine. It repels dirt well and beads water. It is non skid too. It's not a glossy finish but has just a bit or no piqment and seals the teak.

[brankin]

Minaret,
How long do I need to wait for the Awlbrite to out gas before I topcoat with clear. Would you recommend 1,2,3 coats of Awlbrite? I would assume it would be OK to scuff with scotchbrite gray between coats of Awlbrite or can it be hot coated? I need to redoo all the teak on my Endeavour 43 so I want to do it right. Is this the best system on the market in your humble opinion?
Thanks for your expertise...I learn something new everyday.

[minaret]

Originally Posted by brankin

Minaret,
How long do I need to wait for the Awlbrite to out gas before I topcoat with clear. Would you recommend 1,2,3 coats of Awlbrite? I would assume it would be OK to scuff with scotchbrite gray between coats of Awlbrite or can it be hot coated? I need to redoo all the teak on my Endeavour 43 so I want to do it right. Is this the best system on the market in your humble opinion?
Thanks for your expertise...I learn something new everyday.

Sorry but I just noticed some confusion in the terminology of this thread on my part. The proper product names here for the "Ultimate Brightwork System" are Awlspar for the varnish product and Awlbrite for the urethane clearcoat. Awlbrite comes in clear (Awlclear) and semi (just Awlbrite). Gotta keep those product names straight, I had to go check my bucket labels.
To answer your questions, The system in question involves acheiving a proper finish with their traditional phenolic varnish system (Awlspar), before coating with 2-4 coats of the urethane product (Awlbright Clear). This for bare teak usually means 12-16 coats of Awlspar to fill the grain, including split coats, and then a couple of extra coats to provide depth. So for a really cherry finish you might be at 20 coats total when finished, but 16 would be more typical. Like I said a lot of work.
Both Awlspar and Awlbrite can be hotcoated nicely. If you use regular Awlspar instead of Awlspar HS (high solids) you can hotcoat three coats a day with no solvent popping! Obviously you want to stop and sand every X number of coats, depending on personal preference and technique.
Minimum off gassing period for coating Awlspar with Awlbrite is seven days. For other varnishes it's thirty. I do believe this is the best system I've used, and I have used most. It has been tested for some time now. It really lasts, and for a user who is familiar with urethane products, as I know you are, I feel it is really the way to go due to it's longevity and patchability.
Sorry for the confusion on product names, I haven't clear coated anything since last fall. It's a long winter here! And there are so many products for me to keep straight...

http://www.awlgrip.com/ProdLit/Awlgr...uide%206pp.pdf

[Pblais]

I've just started the Awlbrite / AwlSpar process now. I decided to get some help on the sanding as it took about two weeks to get that done. It really is a lot of work, but the teak is really nice and red when sanded. I'll try to get some before pictures up showing the sanding. we need to do some other woodwork as well. The PO screwed a ladder to the toe rail and it didn't work so they did it again and it didn't work well and so they did it on the other side and of course again. It resulted in multiple sets of holes that were never well sealed and made for some rot at the gates on both sides of the boat. I was lucky to find someone to fabricate the sections that had the Asian Teak thicker than 5/4. we will scarf them in before we start the process of "many coats".

The "patch ability" has been proven by a neighbor that has been doing brightwork more than 40 years and he loves this stuff. I saw his previous boat done in Cetol ,and he did a formidable job with it but it was a lot more labor and lacks the depth and gloss of Alwbrite.

Given it takes me 60 hours of labor to do a full sanding I need something that can go the distance. I've long been in favort of the easier to get off approach but sooner or later comes a the big sanding back to real wood that is clean.

After all this sanding I have to say the Fein Multimaster is the weapon of choice but I also found the Rockwell Sonicrafter did great service too and is a lot less and is well made. My Dremel MultiMax was OK but it died nuf said. Being in oddball positions crawling around a boat takes its toll on the body. For the large flat stuff my Dewalt palm sander was and has done great service as well (it's not expensive either). When you have to do that much sanding you need a serious tool! The bad part of all this is the prep is everything with anything you have to apply. Consider that the application of the product is the easy part. Given I'm sore in places I never imagined I can say it's true and I sanded this whole boat without help 6 years ago.

One bonus of Awlbrite is the top coat can be machine buffed to remove scratches. If you have to work this hard the results should look - WOW! I promise pictures.

[minaret]

Originally Posted by Pblais

I've just started the Awlbrite / AwlSpar process now. I decided to get some help on the sanding as it took about two weeks to get that done. It really is a lot of work, but the teak is really nice and red when sanded. I'll try to get some before pictures up showing the sanding. we need to do some other woodwork as well. The PO screwed a ladder to the toe rail and it didn't work so they did it again and it didn't work well and so they did it on the other side and of course again. It resulted in multiple sets of holes that were never well sealed and made for some rot at the gates on both sides of the boat. I was lucky to find someone to fabricate the sections that had the Asian Teak thicker than 5/4. we will scarf them in before we start the process of "many coats".

The "patch ability" has been proven by a neighbor that has been doing brightwork more than 40 years and he loves this stuff. I saw his previous boat done in Cetol ,and he did a formidable job with it but it was a lot more labor and lacks the depth and gloss of Alwbrite.

Given it takes me 60 hours of labor to do a full sanding I need something that can go the distance. I've long been in favort of the easier to get off approach but sooner or later comes a the big sanding back to real wood that is clean.

After all this sanding I have to say the Fein Multimaster is the weapon of choice but I also found the Rockwell Sonicrafter did great service too and is a lot less and is well made. My Dremel MultiMax was OK but it died nuf said. Being in oddball positions crawling around a boat takes its toll on the body. For the large flat stuff my Dewalt palm sander was and has done great service as well (it's not expensive either). When you have to do that much sanding you need a serious tool! The bad part of all this is the prep is everything with anything you have to apply. Consider that the application of the product is the easy part. Given I'm sore in places I never imagined I can say it's true and I sanded this whole boat without help 6 years ago.

One bonus of Awlbrite is the top coat can be machine buffed to remove scratches. If you have to work this hard the results should look - WOW! I promise pictures.

You will be happy with the results. Nothing else looks quite like it. And not only can Awlbrite be machine polished, if you are not happy with a final coat and have a few on you can wet sand 2000 grit before polishing to remove any brush strokes. This guarantees an absolutely perfect finish even if you are having trouble getting that perfect flow coat outdoors.
When it comes to sanding I am very much a traditionalist, especially when talking about coarser grits. For many years we have used only hand sanding with hard blocks and longboards for 40 grit through 120 grit because to me most machine sanders will leave visible swirlies that are almost impossible to get entirely out. You think they are gone until you coat and then you can see them again. I also believe you tend to remove more material in the attempt to remove coarse cross-grain scratches from machine sanding. Therefore I never use an orbital or palm sander or even a detail sander until I'm into 180 grit or above, and often not even then for a really cherry job. We always longboard anyway because the primary ingredient in a really perfect varnish job is a perfectly fair surface, which means hard boarding the flats and rolling the radii with a flexboard. For a very long time this meant the only way for us to efficiently acheive a perfect finish was with a great deal of very hard work. But then one day I had a stroke of genius. I had been using pneumatic autobody files for some years to speed the longboarding process when fairing large repairs, so I thought why not bring the airfile over to brightwork as well? Now it is all I use for 40-120 grit boarding, as it sands in-line only and moves really fast. No cross-grain scratches at all, even when rolling a radius. About ten times faster than a palm sander. But it is of course sort of a pro's tool, it's pneumatic only and can do a lot of damage in the hands of the uninitiated. Recently I acquired a short bed version as well. I think this is the dream tool for sanding brightwork. They tend to get their guts choked up and are hard to rebuild, I've killed about a dozen now. Worth every penny.

[s/v Beth]

Ok guys, my brightwork with was done with two part is bubbling and turning black/grey. I need to do something now. What is the quickest way to get two part polyurthane completely off?
HELP!!

[Pblais]

What is the quickest way to get two part polyurethane completely off?

Grinding!

If you can, I would agree with Minaret about air tools. Quiet and light weight. I would love to have a full set of tools.

If you go for electric power tools. Fein Multimaster is something you will need. I did find my Rockwell tool was pretty close. 2 part won't come off easily and forget heat guns or chemicals. I've also done a fair bit of palm sanding and have suffered tendinitis enough from the past that I don't use it a lot any more. The oscillating tools don't vibrate so much and trash the wrist.

I've had a crew working with me and we just completed the sanding. I am fortunate to have a good woodworker helping and he re bunged a lot of the wood and we bunged up places where screws were never bedded properly. Getting those old bungs tight with new ones should make the finish hold up better - longer. I'm thinking up to now we have about 100 hours into it. Some of the tight places take small hand scrapers and hand sanding. Bright Eyes has a LOT of wood with a double taft rail and 18 spindles.

We just started the first coats of Awlspar over most of the boat and the second on some. The first coat raises grain and does not look like much. You sand that back down and the second coat looks fantastic in the places we have done. I'm hoping we can move along quicker now as long as the weather holds. We need to be done before the stronger sun and heat shows up.

[VirtualVagabond]

Originally Posted by minaret

Yep, you can't heat strip a urethane. But regular Awlbrite which has not been topcoated with Awlclear heat strips just fine. On the other hand the urethane topcoat can actually be spot repaired and blended, so any scratches or gouges can be fixed just like a paint job. If you sand and reapply a coat of urethane every five years it will last 15-20 years without having to be stripped and refinished. And it looks much better than any normal varnish.

Any idea if this would hold up in the tropics too?

[zeehag]

after a little time, the varathane will peel off the cetol and the cetol under the varnish will come off and it will look like crap. is how my boat was done before i got her. was good for the fotos for selling, but rapidly became foogly.
the black is dirt under the finish.
i am using natural wood finished with sea water. is wood colored and natural. not grey. is healthy wood.
however you choose to "do" your brightwork, make sure you have time for sailing the boat.
smooth sailing.

[Cheechako]

Originally Posted by s/v Beth

Ok guys, my brightwork with was done with two part is bubbling and turning black/grey. I need to do something now. What is the quickest way to get two part polyurthane completely off?
HELP!!

Argghhh.... 9" disc Grinder? Ha ... just kidding. I have no idea.. hopefully someone will. Let it be a lesson to those thinking of using this stuff....

[VirtualVagabond]

Originally Posted by zeehag

after a little time, the varathane will peel off the cetol and the cetol under the varnish will come off and it will look like crap. is how my boat was done before i got her. was good for the fotos for selling, but rapidly became foogly.
the black is dirt under the finish.
i am using natural wood finished with sea water. is wood colored and natural. not grey. is healthy wood.
however you choose to "do" your brightwork, make sure you have time for sailing the boat.
smooth sailing.

Hey Zee,
How come it doesn't go grey?
Are you using teak/tung oil?