Refinishing the trim

In the pursuit of sealing all the old hardware, we decided to pull off some trim pieces (I'm self taught, so I'm not versed on the proper nautical terms).


I forgot to take photos while we were working since it was pretty difficult.  Here are the pieces removed after we scraped apart the existing sealant (I suspect it is 3m 4200 caulking)

It was a lot of sealant.  Back at the house, we scraped and scraped and scraped, until most of it was removed.  We plan to get the remaining residue with acetone, but haven't hit it yet.  But with the dried sealant gone, we had several holes in the wood that needed to be filled.

The majority of the sealant was pushed out with a screw driver, then drilled on my drill press with a 3/8" bit.  I then wood glued a few dowels in place and wiped away the excess.

The next day I used a dremel to cut down the dowels on both ends.

Then I hit the whole piece with a belt sander using 60 grit sand paper

I did it in three sections so my clamps would keep it in place.  I then finished the top and sides up with an orbital sander using 50 grit paper to start, then switching to 180 grit.

With that all done, I put the two pieces side by side to show the comparison.

The parts protected by hardware are still pretty visible, but since the hardware is going back over them I'm not worrying about it.

After that I mixed a marine varnish with xylene to thin, and laid on the first coat.

The two boards look vastly different when varnished, I'm guessing whomever built them did not match the wood faces but it's only my novice opinion.  They still look worlds better than before.

More varnishing to happen later.