Faded mahogany

November Charlie

November Charlie

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So the year or two of not paying much attention to my boat has caught up. Varnish is shot, lot of very faded spots on the rails.

What's anyones thoughts on the easiest and/or best way to bring back the color without sanding the bejeebers out of it? (Don't mind the work, but don't wand to take off more wood than I have to)
 
Stain with used coffee grounds, then after dry, refinish.

Obviously, test in a non-obvious area first, but may be effective and is inexpensive.
 
Bill-Is it true that interesting tip originated from "Joe", in Java?

Mike- I'd think judiciously-applied wood-stripper and a putty knife could save a lot of sanding. But that may not deal with the issue of any water & UV stains where the varnish was compromised.
 
Getting what's left of the old varnish off will be easy. Appears to be Cetol - has that fake tan hue. Previous owner must have been from Jersey. But the wood itself is faded. A few test spots proved that sanding it down to smooth doesn't go far enough to expose unfaded wood. Trying to find a way not to go deeper than necessary, especially since I'll be replacing some pieces and adding some new ones. Hate to go the stain route, so I'm hoping someone has a better idea that I haven't thought of.
 
Followup:

Pressure washer actually made a big difference. Much more than expected, so it looks like I won't be hand sanding for 12 hours.

Now on to another more immediate project - the Yamaha multifunction (digital) gauge was full of water! I have it sitting in a vacuum sealed container with a couple desiccant packs to see if she'll survive.
 
"was full of water"

If it was possibly salt water, I hope you soaked it ( and/or rinsed it with fresh ( preferably distilled 0 water before drying...

( From camera repairs. what to do when camera gets dunked. )

Good luck w/ the procedure.
 
A lot of people use dry rice to sometimes save dunked cell phones.
 
quote:
Originally posted by Radioactive

"was full of water"

If it was possibly salt water, I hope you soaked it ( and/or rinsed it with fresh ( preferably distilled 0 water before drying...

( From camera repairs. what to do when camera gets dunked. )

Good luck w/ the procedure.

Click to expand...


Rainwater and/or condensation. It was working somewhat when I noticed it was full of water. We'll see what happens.
 
If you don't have the solution for restoring the faded railing, try some type of oil...like tung oil. Murphys oil soap may work, too, but tung oil would probably be the recommendation at furniture restorers. Didn't look it up, but...
 
Update: I forgot how much stripping varnish and sanding really sucks. I remember this being a lot easier ten years ago. Last time I did this I could have had the whole thing ready for the first coat in a couple hours, and my back wouldn't be sore. Looks like it's going to need a little more than varnish, too - some spots that need to be filled, some plugs will need to be pulled and screw holes fixed to pull pieces back together. Breasthook is in rough shape, but I happen to have an old Whaler seat to make a new one out of - a deeper one so I can build a small stowage compartment or line manger in the bow. Just need to strip all the fake suntan Cetol off it and shape it (in other words, run it through a planer instead of scraping and sanding then cut to shape).

If I can figure out an easy way to post photos I will.
 
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