Cloudy

Lol. Okay, Augie, let me confirm: I need prestain, stain (oak), clear stain (to likely mix with the oak stain), and a poly final stain. So 4 cans of 'stuff' in total? All minwax products?

I'll be taking a trip to the hardware store today for some minwax products. Hope to finish the lower deck today and do the first staining! Thanks again, Augie, for the specific instructions. I think I will go with the oak color, some clear to cut it with (depending on my tastes, I guess) and a minwax poly clear satin to finish it with after the staining is done.

Augie, thanks for taking the time to write that out. I will follow your suggestions with one exception: if I play too much with scrap wood, I'll never make forward progress on the build! I think I'll just go to a hardware store and pick up some products (minmax, oak stain, and clear finish) and just "git er done."

Be a good idea to establish your finishing process for the deck before you get too far into it.  You will want to be consistant.  Use some scrap wood to determine what you will be using for simulated caulking as well as the stain/finish sequence you will be using.  Once you have a total process you'll want to stick with it.

 

Looking good so far.

Hi Augie, my newness is showing: what is meant by 'stain/finish' sequence? Do people normally stain and seal the decking?

Started planking the lower deck. After drawing a center line down the deck, I cut a few strips of wood to length and experimented with darkening the edges. I can't get pencil to show up, so I used black sharpie for the middle row and then switched to brown sharpie. I'm not sold that this looks "good," but I think it will come out good enough. I may consider another option for planking the upper deck when the time comes.

Finished sanding the filler blocks. Pretty satisfied with my progress.

Slagoon; yes, there are two decks. It might be a while to get them put together, though. There is a cap rail 'thing' (I'll post pictures eventually) that doesn't lay flat because some of the bulkheads were not cut well or perhaps not assembled well by me. I.e., this is going to be slow going for a bit.

Augie, thanks for the welcome. Sure, grab a chair and cup of coffee and settle in - it's going to be a while.

Off to hopefully finish the sanding of these filler blocks!

Did some more sanding/dremel work last night and this is where she sits. Still need to take down a bit more balsa between the bulkheads before moving on. I'm quite pleased with how the false keel came out - it is straight enough for my first real build.

I hadn't updated my build log in a while and came back to find everything gone. Rather than repitch the story, I'll try to repost all of the pictures and give an update of my current status. Cheers everyone.