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Permalink Reply by Dave Z on April 21, 2009 at 12:41pm

Herb,

yes you can.

I have done this in the past.

My brown boat is a marine fir boat with an american walnut water based stain applied. Epoxied, then varnished. I used a Behlen water based powdered stain. I needed two small jars to do all of the boat. if you use multiple jars of the powder, dump them both in a larger jar and shake it up. this way you will get consistent color.

There are some tricks to it.

1. keep in mind that when you scarf you will get epoxy selaing the wood around your scarf. You will have to get creatinve to color that area. A method that I know works is to scarf your wood after staining. you will need to cut your sides out first, but leave them proud to accomodate the overlap.

2. The wood will be difficult to match unless you do a pre-soak. This means the wood will suck up alot of the stain if it is dry. then it will dry as you work across the sheet. It can turn out patchy. and patchy is no good. What I have done to remedy this is to use wood alcohol mixed in. pre-wet the wood with wood alcohol and water. then apply your stain. It can be made very even like this.

i would suggest heavy experimentation on scrap wood first to get a feel of the application.

It will dry very dull. once you hit it with epoxy and the varnish, prepared to be blown away.

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Permalink Reply by Herb Jacobsen on April 21, 2009 at 3:10pm

Thanks Dave,

I appreciate the reply. I saw a boat years ago that had a transparent stain and then was varnished. It was gorgeous. I have thought about that color combination for a long time.

I will use fir for the sides and bottom so the grain should show pretty well. I will even try the graphite and glass for the bottom. Should be fun. Hopefully when I get back from AK I will start on the project.

Herb

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Permalink Reply by Richard on April 21, 2009 at 8:58pm

I am just in the final stages of finishing a double ender and I used a 2 stain process on fir marine plywood. The results came out very nice . The process is used alot in fine woodworking to give depth. You might want to consider the process.
1. Aniline Water Stain which is made from aniline dye (there are numerous colours around). The dye does not mask the natural grain and texture of the wood. You can wipe the wood after with a cloth. Aniline dye is very cheap to purchase and comes in powder form.
2. A gel stain is used over top of the dried aniline stain. It is usually left on 4-5 minutes or whatever suits you from the testing before hand you have done and then wiped off with a cloth. The gel stain is pigmented so it will mask the wood some but wiping lessens this.
I mention testing before hans which is what you have to do to get the desired colour effect. Because of the large surface I used a paint sprayer with theaniline. Had to put it through a paint filter before hand. The gel was just painted on with a brush.
I was trying to get a mahogany effect so I used a dark red aniline dye and a american colour gel stain from Varathane. The time invested is well worth the outcome. If you get any scratches before applying the final varnish you can just touch up with the aniline dye.

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Permalink Reply by Herb Jacobsen on April 24, 2009 at 9:32am

Thanks Richard, I will look into this application also. I will probably do some spraying this time around. It is something I have been wanting to try.

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Permalink Reply by Sandy Pittendrigh on April 25, 2009 at 5:54am

West System (epoxies) used to recommend Watco 5-minute stains, which
where alcohol based. I used that stuff for years. It was great. But now they
don't make it anymore. Water based stains work too, but they're occasionally
troublesome due to a tendancy to raise the softwood grain while drying.

Is there another alcohol based stain out there somewhere?
I haven't been able to find it. Finally, I've reached a point where I don't like
stain anyway. I want a paint finish or a bright (not stained) finish.
So I'll bet there is an alcohol stain out there some where. But I'm not
even looking for it.

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