I, too, need to do something about the beat-up cabin door on my P19, Redwing.
However, I'm thinking about taking a different approach. I'm thinking of
putting "surfboard" glasscloth all over the old wooden doors and then
gelcoating it. Surfboard glass is about $5 per yard and is really fine weave,
so it's easy to wrap around corners.
I'm completely restoring the gelcoat inside and outside on Redwing, so I
already ordered a couple of cans of "Cloud White" gelcoat from IM and am
planning to spend a week doing gelcoat work.
(BTW, Bruce, Glenn and Scott are really being helpful in my restoration
project even though I'm not a prospective new boat buyer. Somebody was
complaining a few months ago that IM doesn't take care of people who already
bought their boats, but that certainly hasn't been my experience at all. They
have gone out of their way to help me.)
The woodgrain and veneer on my old door is pretty deteriorated, so I'm just
going to fill the splintered areas with thickened resin, put glasscloth and
polyester resin over the whole thing to make it chip-proof, and then gelcoat
it. The factory gelcoat is polyester based, so you have to use polyester
resin underneath it or else you risk having the resin fail to cure. A piece
of acetate film rolled onto it for curing should give me a nice, glossy
professional finish. (real Saran wrap works,but thicker film comes gives a
smoother finish)
The whole thing should cost me less than $30 (including brushes, gloves,
thinner, chemicals, etc) if I reuse the old hardware. And I'll never have to
revarnish it <grin>! Maybe I'll put a little bit of wood trim on it for
looks.... but I hate doing maintenance varnishing!
We'll see how it comes out... if it doesn't look really good when I'm done,
I'll do the more conventional thing and make it a new one out of wood. I'll
take pictures of the project and put it up on my website
Regards,
Judy B.
PS. For those of you who want to refinish wood that has only a few splinters
missing and still have the woodgrain show through: I've been told that
surfboard and kayak shapers use surfboard glasscloth with "surfboard" resin,
because it wets out with resin so that it becomes invisible/transparent, and
because surfboard resin is much more UV resistant than regular resin (which
yellows and cracks really quickly in sunlight). The wood grain will show
through beautifully and the stuff is supposed to be reasonably UV resistant,
according to what I've read (but I have no personal experience with it.)
Judith Blumhorst, DC
HMS18/P19 Fleet Cap'n, Potters Yachters
1985 WWP19 #266 Redwing
(Rigged so a petite woman can solo)
Sailing on SF Bay, CA
(5-35 knot winds, 2-4' chop, 2-6' swells, and currents up to 6 knots)
Visit <A HREF="http://members.aol.com/jblumhorst/HomePage/index.htm">Judy B's
West Wight Potter Pages</A>
and <A HREF="http://songbird.com/potter_yachter/">The Official Web Site of the
Potter Yachters</A>