Practical Boat Owner — January 2018

David Parker shows a simple and effective way to skim off the

congealed surface and avoid getting pesky bits in the brightwork

O

pened paint or varnish

is always vulnerable to

skin forming in the tin and

however carefully you try to

fish this out in one piece it inevitably

breaks up into lumps. These of course

disperse further as you stir the coating

and unless you filter the paint you will

be forever lifting out those irritating

specks of congealed paint or varnish

from your fresh coating. Furthermore

fast drying formulations seem to make

the matter worse – their added driers

are great for going off quickly and

reducing dust contamination and so

on but they also seem to do some

serious top down congealing when the

lid goes back on.

There are various tricks such as standing

a tin upside down for storage when you

next seal the lid, but I have found this

never really works effectively and the only

way to get a decent job is to filter the paint

or varnish next time you use it. A simple

way to do this is shown below and

opposite. By using a couple of empty

plastic milk bottles you can cut yourself

containers and funnels and be left with a

minimum of cleaning up afterwards. The

filter used is an old pair of tights.

Under the skin: filtering

your varnish and paint

Here’s what we are

trying to get rid of:

those lumpy bits of

skin that break off

as you stir the varnish

Get a couple of used plastic milk bottles that have been washed

and dried and then cut them in half as shown here

Often when you filter varnish or paint directly into an old jar, the

filtering material can slip or sag making quite a mess. To avoid

this, wrap the cut end of a pair of old tights around the top of one

of the containers. No tying is required to secure it

PRACTICAL