I am currently building a cedar strip kayak for my wife (a scaled down CNCkayaks Vember) and when I wet down the hull with water to raise the grain before final sanding I noticed about a dozen small areas where I had filled a small area with wood putty made using PVA glue and wood dust collected while sanding. In retrospect it was dumb not to use epoxy but I wanted something easy to sand flush. Has any used acetone or acetone mixed with water and vinegar to remove such stains? I assume the same issue must occur when building with plywood that is to be finished clear. Yes, I could keep sanding but the hull has been carefully faired. Thanks
Hi Dave,
i routinely use PVA glue with sawdust to fill in gaps on my strip builds. so i am familiar with the ‘staining’ you are talking about.
i don’t have a good answer other than to say its typically on the surface and sanding is the approach i use to remove it…..i am not aware of any other way - water or chemically to get rid of it. so i do have some of my builds that have that staining.
my general observation is that it typically appears worse then it really is. if i step back a pace or two… in many cases i just moved forward….and set a mental note to try to be cleaner next time.
also, fwiw, we can, depending on the strip size you are working with, sand it out without creating faring problems given that it tends to be very surface oriented. i realize it may feel like a lot…but if you are dealing with a 1/4 inch strip….you can typically get rid of it with as little a 1/64….so there is a lot of material left.
while you cannot see it on a lot of the pictures i post, if you were doing up close inspections, i can point out PVA stains on all of my really nice builds…as well as staple holes and other little imperfections. this one, probably has the most, though most people don’t notice
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Howard, as usual I was hoping for an easy solution. Between canoes earlier in my life and kayaks recently I have always used staples. I admire those who are avoid them but I build my boats to use and a few staple hole just doesn’t matter to me after a year of two of use
Truth to materials at work. Or, modernist architecture applied to boats. Whatever you want to call it, the principle of not hiding the characteristics of the materials, not hiding the construction process artifacts and celebrating, not hiding the characteristics, capabilities and history of the materials has been espoused for almost 100 years now by people such as Ruskin and Moore. It’s applied every time that one of us goes with a bright, rather than painted finish and we see the wood’s grain; when we leave the staple and stitch holes unfilled and have little black dots; when the weave pattern is visible at certain light angles; when repairs are visible.
It doesn’t mean that we should settle for sloppy workmanship. Rather, it’s a philosophy that within the limits of fulfilling its function, the material should not be treated as something to be ashamed of or camouflaged. It should be celebrated and allowed to be itself. This sets up some strange situations. For example, a sleek, shiny, yacht finish to make the wooden boat look like the painted metal of an expensive car or the gelcoat finish of a production fiberglass boat is philosophically dishonest by this definition. On the other hand, if it’s a racing kayak and the purpose of the sleek, shiny finish is to improve the hydrodynamic characteristics and make it race better, then the wood is honestly doing its job of supporting the outer surface in a way that it can best do its job, so it’s OK. It’s fulfilling its function.
Personally, I don’t get that wrapped up in it. David’s statement that a few staple holes just don’t matter after a while sums it up really well. The rest of it is just theoretical justification when arguing over beer about who’s got the best boat. Trotting out the modernist design theory is often a good way to get the subject changed 