Here you see the wood stripped and some of the stain applied. It felt good to get to this stage. Once the stain goes on it is down hill from here. We use a filler stain that stains the mahogany and helps fill the grain. It is nice to get a good uniform color throughout the boat. I like when the wood matches.It looks newer and richer. When there are different colors throughout the boat due to stripping at different stages it is hard to get the uniform look. I like the mahogany and the stain for that reason. Teak is strong and holds up better to the abuse and raw new teak varnished is so beautiful. The challenge for me with teak is keeping everything uniform as the sun bleaches it blond. To keep the teak looking rich many times you have to sand the blond colored wood off the top to get to the rich wood below. This means taking a bunch of meat off of the wood to get there. The patches are harder on teak and you don’t have the stain to help match color when you have an accident and put a ding in the wood. The oils in the teak and the hard body don’t allow for even staining.One of the tricks that has been painful to learn after all these years of varnishing the boat is to sand down to 400 grit before any stain even goes on the stripped bare wood. It is so tempting late in the day after getting it down to 220grit that you just want to get the stain on. From what I have learned it is better to get the wood so smooth it is almost polished smooth before the stain goes on. The reason is that the coats of varnish to follow are fewer and it saves a ton of work later filling in the grain with varnish. With what we do with the staining if you have some stray sanding marks from stripping this sanding helps get rid of the last ones. At the 400 grit stage the grain is way less and mostly filled in by the stain. Many of my mentors and most captains of today feel the varnish is foolish and a movement towards painting the wood out is becoming the norm. At times I agree when a careless guest puts a big ding in it,but after working hard all week and it is shining in the sun it is beautiful and really makes the boat pop. It represents our commitment to our job.When we fish on custom boats with beautiful wood that is taken care of it just feels good. The custom boats of the vintage age all had varnished toenails and cab arounds at the least, so we like to try to carry on the tradition by keeping our wood varnished. As busy as we get there is time to get it done it just takes hard work to keep up with it. Next we put on the varnish and make it shine.
