How to best prep and varnish your boat - Part 1 

Howdy! Wow! This is EXACTLY what I was looking for. I am a Seaman Apprentice. My only desire is to focus solely on the prep and varnish woodwork on the gorgeous Steam Yacht Medea. It's not a replica. I understand and know about the 4 existing known steam yachts in the universe. This is the real thing, and over 100 years old! My goal is to do EXCELLENT (TLC) work on this beautiful steam yacht to live another 100 years beyond me. The entire series of videos enhanced my knowledge of carefully working on the other ships at the San Diego Maritime Museum. Enjoy a toast of the best Scotch Whisky with me - legendary across the world. -- The River Clyde, Linthouse, Glasgow, Scotland. ⛵

I watched 8 minutes of scraping varnish. Appreciate the work.

this is why we use to have apprenticeships ,so skilled people could teach inexperienced people the quickest and easiest way to do a job instead of rushing in with a power sander and making the job worse. the skill and dedication in these vids is amazing to watch and I wasn't that interested in boat restoration till I started to watch this site, thank you for the vids and please keep them coming.

You can just call me a “boatwrong” That was beautiful. Great job

Thankyou from Bognor Regis uk. Your soothing teachings have taught me how to repair and care for my mirror dinghy. Your lessons have connected me deeper to my hobby and passion cheers!

Every video is is packed with great shipwright tips. Thank you.

Why this (presumable) family would interrupt a sailing season by taking this sweet little boat out for cosmetic touch-ups is beyond me. I'd rather sail than have mirror-smooth varnish- but then again, I don't have a doughdish and I'm glad I get to watch men like Louis Sauzedde at work. Keep it up!

Thanks! This is just what I was looking for

I love your videos Louis. I used a lot of your tips and advice as I was building a cedar strip canoe. Just started my second one. Thanks so much for regularly posting stuff!

love your videos Lou so practical. thanks for sharing! iam building a 16ft carvel workboat in Ireland and follow along with your videos. they have helped me a lot!!

Lots of comments about cabinet scrapers, I worked in a cabinet factory for over 7 years as quality control/repair. They work best on very flat surfaces unless you have a curved scraper. The simple razor blade technique used is best for this application as you can easily alter pressure on either side of the blade or scrape to follow the contours of a rounded edge. A good cabinet scraper can do a great job at knocking down drips, runs, sags and other clear coat issues. In this case the razor blade is cheaper, easy to control and works very well. Why pay more for a tool that has one function when you can pay less for a tool that has multiple uses? Fascinating video as always.

Total respect for Lou and I'd be dragging a dang razor blade if I was working under him, BUT also a Quick trip to the grinder to knock off the corners (and deburr of course)-is what I'd do to avoid digging with the corners. But then I'm likely to be using a different sort of scraper to start with in my shop. I make 'em from steel banding material, burred as desired. I started out with more rigid scrapers, even glass-but flexible steel is what works best under my hands for contoured or flat surfaces.

I love watching this guy work !

Awesome videos. Extremely well spoken and full of knowledge. The beard also lends a ton of credibility. 😁

Something I remember from my auto painting days is to dull the razor tips or put a piece of masking tap over each tip. That way you cut down on deep scratches you'd have to sand out later. Cheers! Great vid!

This is awesome! Thanks for your videos!

Awesome man, Love the work!

Love this series

My first thought was to use a cabinet scraper, totally agree with L. Reed

you can fold tape over the corners to stop them from digging

Three Cheers!! ... as always. Thanks for the lesson!

How does this guy not have arthritis, my fingers and knuckles ache just watching it and I'm only 32

boat builder for 5 years, furniture maker for 41 years. A well sharpened cabinet scraper would have done this easier and quicker than this method. Great respect for Louis. Keep up the great videos.

I use a silk negligé to magnify my touch when I do bodywork on cars.

I have done the exact to get rid of runs and thicker varnish....a handled scraper works just fine because of the angle that the blade sits in the utility blade scraper....using a blade on its own works but it’s tiring with your bare fingers, a handled utility knife scraper WORKS !

Great video as always. Have you ever tried a cabinet scraper for jobs like this? I would think it would make the job go much quicker and give you a flatter finish as well. I've never tried it myself so I'm not recommending it, just curious if it would work. Thanks for the vid.

Might want to look into getting a "Cabinet Scraper" for that first part, might find it a bit easier and at the very least, the blade is bigger.

This may have been asked, but would a well-tuned card scraper be a good option for removing high-spots and sags?

Listen to Lou. He's trying to teach you something. If a cabinet scraper would do what needs to be done here, he would have used a cabinet scraper. It wouldn't, so he didn't. Don't try to be smarter than the Master.

6” Cabinet scraper would have come in handy for this.

have you aver tried to use a hand plane set to a very shallow cut in order to smooth the surface?

The varnish whisperer

any reason not to use say a more dull [think dust?] scraper instead of the little razor blade?

The scrapping had me wanting to cover my ears but I wanted to hear what you were saying. I just can't handle that scraping scratching sound.

looks like Elmer got his hands on some varnish.

Lots of manual labor keeping bright work shining.

Would a cabinet scraper be too aggressive?

Surprised on the second boat you did not remove everything down to bare wood, is this called a refresh what you are doing. Is this what the client requested.

What caused the dark stain across the transom? That's unusual.

Neither I am fond of machines, hand is the best way !

I am going to be going to Jamestown Distributors this weekend to get some of the tools I need for IYRS this september, and I have a question of what i will need for a spokeshave. Will I need a flat bottomed or a round bottom shave? They tell me to get the regular stanley shave in the tool list but I feel a round bottom shave would be beneficial to me. Thanks!

Wouldn’t a large card scraper work faster?

A D.A. sander with some 320 would have made it flat as a mirror

what goes without saying and is pretty funny is that the owner probably did that last awful varnish job

His use of words" makes you want to have a go"" "scraping off varnish "for fun"" , varnishing on anything but a flat surface" Alway fun to do""

Crying out loud my boat is ruined