Testing Stains

I intended for the Sea Scull to have a bright finish of stained wood. The RevolutionPly has a nice unprimed hardwood surface veneer on one face and primed hardwood surface veneer on the other face. Before building the Sea Scull, I decided to test the RevolutionPly with various stains.



I tested West System 105 epoxy resin with 207 hardener over Minwax Wood Finish stains on both faces of the RevolutionPly. I tried Minwax Early American 230, Red Oak 215 and Golden Pecan 245. I also tested no stain at all. The test was conducted by

1. Applying the 3 stains to both faces of the RevolutionPly,
2. Letting the stains cure,
3. Applying epoxy-saturated fiberglass swatches to the 3 stains plus unstained RevolutionPly,
4. Letting the epoxy cure,
5. Judging the appearance of each,
6. Tearing the fiberglass swatches off, and
7. Saying "Holy shit those came off easy!"

RevolutionPly with test swatches.
Primed face on top, unprimed face on bottom.
Minwax Early American 230, unstained, Red Oak 215
and Golden Pecan 245 (left to right).
That peanut butter-looking fiberglass thing between the first two cans of stain
is a test of thickened epoxy and fiberglass. It turned out strong as hell - could not
pull it apart.

At this point, I have decided that the primed face of the RevolutionPly is butt-ugly, will have to be the interior of the boat and painted.

I like the unstained finish on the unprimed side better than any stain, so I will not to use any stain at all.

I noticed that the Red Oak 215 felt oily after curing and when I tore the test swatches off, the epoxy did not bond to the Red Oak 215 at all, on both sides of the RevolutionPly.

The epoxy bonded well to the Early American 230, unstained and Golden Pecan 245 on both sides of the RevolutionPly.

However, the hardwood veneer, on both the unprimed and primed sides of the RevolutionPly, is paper thin and not very well bonded to the ply beneath. That is why it was so easy to pull the swatches off. The hardwood surface veneers stuck to the epoxy/fiberglass swatches better than they stuck to the plies beneath. This is not good news. I would prefer the surface veneers to be more robustly-bonded to the plies beneath. For now I will forge ahead with the RevolutionPly.

Unprimed face of RevolutionPly without stain, with epoxy-saturated fiberglass.