Today I ordered a new stitch and glue kit, a Bluefin, and that started me thinking about the finish (before I started, I know!) This will be the fourth boat I’ve worked on, two of us built three boats this year. I say two, one boat was for my wife, she only helped during fiber glassing, so I take credit for building most of two boats, but would have hated to do it without my partner who was an experienced wood worker.

I’ve include a photograph of two of our boats.

The stain idea came to me first when I bought Ted Moores’ new book “Kayaks You Can Build.” He describes in very clear detail the building of three boats. One, a Pygmy Coho, is finished with a green stained deck.

It looks beautiful. The book is a masterpiece too.

Then just yesterday I found the slide show that Nick Schade has provided about the building of a S&G Night Heron. That boat has some deck panels stained blue.

Today I searched this sites messages and found a detailed message by “Rascal” (http://www.kayakforum.com/cgi-bin/Building/index.cgi/noframes/read/107524). This is a very good description of the staining process.

There are many more messages on staining I should read. What I’ll do in the remainder of this message is describe what I think I understand, inserting some questions (You can find the questions by searching for a question mark “?”) , and see if some other points surface from you forum participants.

I. The staining must be done before any epoxy is applied.

II. Water or alcohol-soluble dyes must be used. Oil and epoxy don’t mix. Moores mentions Aniline dyes.

?Are Aniline dyes a standard dye available at wood working stores?

III. The surface must be prepared carefully and a grain raising step is suggested where the grain is raised by sponging with a little warm water. Following that a sanding is done with 220 grit sanding across the grain. Finally this surface is vacuumed.

IV. The Moores takes another grain raising step (Here I wasn’t certain if this was in addition to Step III above). In this current step he applies a weak solution of the dye (50/50), then sands across the grain. He repeats here that it is important to keep a wet edge and to keep moving to avoid any puddles which change the intensity of the stain effect. Again he vacuums, using a brush attachment.

V. Then a full strength dye is applied and again he counsels that one must watch carefully to avoid an variation in the application.

VI. Following the full strength dye he allowed the panel to dry for twenty-four hours then lightly rubbed it down with a fine Scotchbrite pad.

VII. Now comes the epoxy as a sealer. He used one coat of sealer, but suggest two could be used.

?Does this sealing step cause a problem by making the panels too stiff and thus increasing the difficulty of the stitching step?

VII. All of the above happens before the deck panels are joined, later they are stitched together, and after that the deck is fiber glassed.

?When the deck is fiber glassed later the panels will require sanding for the epoxy/fiber glass to adhere, correct? Moores may spell that out but I haven’t found it yet. This is a big book.

BTW, I intend staining only the two middle deck panels (blue). I will paint the outside deck panels red, and the hull white.