Varnishing

Somewhere I read that varnishing is the "glory job" but personally I would describe it as the "gory job". So much work goes into the preparation to create a dust free environment. The only plus is that my wife Debra is very happy that the basement gets so thoroughly cleaned. This time in addition to a complete cleaning I created a virtual plastic tent over and around the canoe.

Once all the preparation is done however the results are beautiful. Here is the center yoke hanging to dry.

No, I am not turning into a sculptor. This is a neat little rack idea I stole from Nick Offerman's free Adobe account of the Bear Mountain Boat he built. I found it somewhere on the Bear Mountain Boat Shop site.

It basically keeps each extension tube for the seats labeled in the right place and they can actually be varnished on the rack simply by spinning them around the headless nail they are mounted on. Pretty cool.
Here is a picture of my "varnishing tent" with the seats hanging in the foreground and the one thwart in the background. I'm using the Epifances varnish that came with the kit and using a foam brush this time to eliminate streaks, runs and hopefully dust. So far so good.
My practice that I tried with the final varnish coats of the kayak is to keep the varnish chamber totally unventilated while I varnish and for an hour afterward. The fumes were not bad and it eliminates any dust particles moving around. After about an hour I have an exhaust fan pulling air through the basement but still not over the canoe. I also pull air from the upstairs and exhaust any of the fumes through the basement. Seems to be working well. First coat on the inside done - 3 or 4 more and then we flip it.