Re: [Paddlewise] Paddle Finish

If your paddle is screaming, "gimme oil!" then what ever fluid contacts
it is going to suck down in deep.  To apply water to achieve grain
raising and then follow with a penetrating resin (homemade or otherwise)
would seal in the bad stuff.  It is advised that you use the thinner
that works with your finishing product for grain raising as it will
blend with and percolate out of the coat(s) to follow (if memory serves
me).

A flood product, deks ojle is highly advised for marine use woods.  It's
a high maintenance product, being more oil than resin (part one of the 2
part mix).  I used part one on my canoe rails and liked how it worked. 
It's a highly thinned oil with some hardening resin.  It's application
calls for continually applying the product until you can't stand the
fumes anymore.  That's not exactly what it says on the can, but the just
of it is: the more the merrier, and then you wipe it off and let it
dry.  And if you do this on a cool day and the next day it gets hot,
you'd better look into wiping it again.  You don't want it to expell oil
and then have it dry on the surface.

Since a penetrating resin dries and hardens internally, further coats
will have largely diminishing value.  This makes this one pain in the
!_at_#$ application a superior method of application imho.  Minwax and
Watco both probably make good marine penetrating resins, but I found the
deks ojle most reccommended.  Painters were making penetrating resin
decades (if not centuries) before it was invented, with varnish and
linseed oil, but I tend to think a product designed for internal
hardening is going to be designed to achieve the slowest possible
hardening.  Whether you can achieve the same increase in hardening time
by adding more linseed oil as compared to using a modern penetrating
resin I don't know.  But if there were considerable cost savings (lots
of sq ft) I would go for the cost savings.  To finish the rails on one
boat and a couple paddles I'd use the modern stuff.

That said, I wouldn't fail to use a spar polyurethane on a chunk of wood
to be continually immersed in water (read paddle).  You could tape it
off so as to not varnish the area that would be gripped.  And use deks
ojle on the handle, spar poly on the blade.

Mike
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