I’d like to see your wood (gunwales that is), plus a question

I use a lot of spar varnish on my boats that have been coated with an epoxy. I do not enjoy working with varnish, but I feel it's necessary in that instance. I hate redoing the varnish, but unfortunately it's a frequent task for me.
Anytime I have wood without epoxy, I use some sort of oil. For years I used tung oil on all my paddles and wood trim in canoes and other boats. Since purchasing a new Northstar Seliga with wood trim two years ago, I have been introduced to Watco Exterior oil. I can't say how Watco compares to other oils for long term protection, but it's easy to apply and looks and feels fantastic.
I enjoy the process of oiling wood, I find it very satisfying, not a chore. A couple times a year I grab a good cotton rag and a can of oil and I oil every paddle, the wood trim on the Seliga and older Bell Northwind and any furniture and wood handled tools I can think of. As a matter a fact I see the coffee table in the living room could use a coat of oil, maybe today's a day to oil everything that's not stored out in the cold.

I've used a lot off 100% tongue oil over the years for all sorts of projects, especially paddles and the like. I had intended to try some Watco because I see it positively referenced all over this forum, until I read @gumpus's post above, which was news to me:

gumpus said:

I stopped using Watco since it's toxic and takes forever to dry...

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I'm ok with long dry times but looked up the Safety Data Sheet for Watco and figured it was worth sharing with the group because, Gumpus is right, it ain't good for you:
https://www.rustoleum.com/MSDS/ENGLISH/67741.pdf

I like to do oiling maintenance indoors during the winter time. It can be a real pleasure to spend some time in a warm shop with a pile of paddles, a set of disposable gloves and some good tunes. Doing so with a respirator is a lot less fun, so I think I'm likely to stick with tongue oil for now.

@Pseudonym - Well, that report is sobering. Thanks for sharing that. I've used Watco oil for years and never realized the hazards it could contain. I always thought of it as pretty benign stuff. Guess I'll need to reconsider that.

That's all for now. Take care and until next time....be well.

snapper

You’re likely not going to be exposed to the watco teak oil enough to worry about any side effects or toxicity issues.

I would think 99% of us come into contact with unleaded gasoline on a regular basis and the MSDS sheet for it isn’t great either.


You likely get gas on your hands or clothing and inhale the vapors much more consistently than you would be applying watco oil. Just thought I would add that perspective.

I use Watco. My canoe is canoe is 16 years old, and I've owned it for 12 years. I paddle 80-90 days a year and store the canoe inside.
I see my canoe is a work boat and the gunwhales aren't pretty, but there is not a spot of rot anywhere, and that's all I care about. Maybe once a month, I just rub some oil on. The gunwhales look better than the bottom of the canoe.

I have seven canoes with wood gunnels, the newest of which is 18 years old and most are over 30. All have been treated with Watco at least annually and all are in excellent condition. Maybe 5-10 minutes per boat per year- no big deal. Another thing to consider is the feel of varnished vs oiled wood particularly for paddles. I really like the feel of my oiled paddles a lot better than those that are varnished. It is easy and actually enjoyable to rub in some hemp oil on the paddles as needed. They look pretty new afterward. The photos below are of a couple of boats that I bought used. I rehabbed the gunnels with sanding and Watco Teak oil. The Bell Wildfire was in really bad shape (the owner only wanted $250 for it 2 years ago) and now it is one of my favorites. Personally, I prefer wood to aluminum or vinyl gunnels.

Wow, @Halpc ! You got that Wildfire for $250 and sweat equity? I would have immediately ran out and bought a pocket full of lottery tickets!

It was a stroke of luck. I didn't "need" it, since I already had a NS Phoenix IXP (the only canoe I have bought new since 1992), but I have never regretted the purchase. I gave a buddy a ride down to look at two Bell Royalex Yellowstones which had been advertised and there it was, looking forlorn. We drove off with two boats on my truck rack.

Based on the comments here, I decided I should go ahead and purchase some Badger Paddle wood oil. I have a Badger paddle that I picked up late last summer and that I really like, and figured I should go ahead and oil it this winter, plus it would be good to have the oil on hand for when my new boat gets here in March if I decide I want to try it on the gunwales. Unfortunately, it is seemingly hard to come by. It is out of stock on Badger’s site, as well as at Rutabaga and there’s not a lot of other options. It is available through Swift’s website, but with shipping to the U.S./Missouri, it is over $60 for a quart. That seemed too steep for me so I started researching alternatives and came across the below food-safe Tung oil:


It is readily available many places (including Amazon), seems like it should be pretty good stuff if the marketing is to be believed, and is half the price. As a bonus I discovered the company is actually based in Missouri which is an odd bit of coincidence but pretty cool I thought as I do like to support local when I can. I figured based on all of that it was worth trying.

Anyway, I finally got around to oiling my paddle today so I’ll try to report back on how I end up liking this brand/product. If anyone else has used this particular brand before I’d be happy to hear others’ opinions on it and how it holds up or if there is anything I should watch out for.

Just another gunnel pic.

Hemlock Nessmuk XL... picked up in Aug of 2019. Just Watco teak oil on the wood. Perfect condition. For comparison, my paddle in the background is two-tone, partly sunlight, but also from the finish... the yellow is some sort of resin and the grey is where I sanded it off and used boiled linseed oil on the hand grip part, so it won't blister my hands. I'd say the BLO is less durable, but I'm also wearing that part more heavily with use, so perhaps that's why it's grey.

Mad River from an old website no longer in existence, see it on the Internet Archive -

WHY ARE GUNWALES OILED INSTEAD OF VARNISHED?
Canoe gunwales are subject to incessant flexing as the boat is handled and paddled. A certain amount of flex occurs every time you take a stroke. It's also inevitable that a gunwale will be bumped or scraped.

Varnish is great for use on static pieces of wood like furniture. It is a surface protectant that provides a barrier coat against the elements. Canoe-wise, you'll find varnish used to coat seat frames, yokes, and thwarts. These pieces are very static and rigid and not subject to flex. Flex causes problems for varnish as varnish is not very dynamic or giving. Repeated flex will create a series of minute stress cracks in a varnish coat. Bumps and scrapes will also crack or abrade the varnish top coat. Once that surface coat is cracked, water can creep underneath and affect the wood. This is evident by the gray discoloration that shows up on worn varnish coated products. Take a look at the edges of a used wooden canoe paddle and you'll see signs of water penetration via surface cracks or dings in the varnish.

Oil on the other hand is a penetrating finish that in effect is soaked up by the wood and then hardens to preserve the wood. As such, it is far better suited for use on canoe gunwales. As the oil has penetrated the wood, a bump or scrape doesn't remove the finish either.

The disadvantage to oil finishes is that they need to be periodically touched up and replenished.

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All of my wood gunwales are oiled with Watco Teak, redo every year.
The Mad River Explorer gunnels had rotted away due to being stored outside for decades with no maintenance.. I put on new gunnels and confidently expect those to outlive me.
The Seda Scout used to have varnish but the previous owner didn't keep up, so the varnish had cracked and flaked away over the years. The wood is still in fairly good shape, some grey and open seamed-areas. After a good coat of oil the grayness is gone and the seams are not expanding.

I redid the varnish on a wood paddle a couple of years back, using a good marine spar varnish. It had lasted a decade or so, eventually the chips and flakes and water intrusion were starting to damage the wood just as MR notes above.

Now the interesting question to me is - it is standard practice to use spar varnish to finish split-cane bamboo fly rods. That varnish will last for decades, while the rod is flexed steadily and frequently whenever it is fished. Yet that varnish doesn't crack or leak, at least not for a couple of decades.

All varnishes are some combination of oils, resins, solvents.
Oils – Linseed Oil or Tung Oil
Resins – Alkyd, Phenolic, or Polyurethane
Solvents – Mineral Spirits, Naptha, or Paint Thinner
Epifanes varnish is what I usually put on fly rods and paddles. That is tung oil, phenolic resin, naptha and a bit of xylene.

Mad River gunwales, with flexed split-cane rod for comparison ;-)

Jumping in a bit late here .... a lot of the performance of the gunnel finish needs to take into account the amount of exposure to the sun that the boat gets.

If the gunnel is sealed and has good UV protection, it will stay looking like new .... the sun (UV) and moisture (nature) attack the boat the minute it leaves it protection or all the time if left outside. If UV gets to the lignin holding the wood fibers together, it will degrade just like epoxy and then if it gets wet, it washes away .... so the finishes job is to provide a waterproof barrier and solid UV protection.

The three main finishes under discussion are "Watco" style oils, Spar and polyurethane varnish, poly is not particularity good for either waterproofing or UV protection IMO ... so that leaves the oil and spar camps.

If you use a quality spar varnish with "extra UV" protection, the directions are pretty clear that several coats are required to build a coating up to a thickness that provides a certain/adequate amount of UV protection. The Watco/Danish exterior oils look to be basically thinned varnish (wiping varnish) with a splash of BLO and some UV protectant (that come with the varnish) if it is mentioned on the product.

I use oil finishes on some of my furniture projects and the layers are incredibly thin, I can't even imagine how many layers of oil would be required to give the thickness of just a single coat of Epiphnanes (as an example), and several coats of that are required for even moderate UV protection. Has any one found UV protection numbers for oil products, like can be found with the spar varnishes ( I couldn't find anything)?

The varnish is more work to apply and provides a somewhat tougher, longer lasting finish, less maintenance with better UV protection. Before anyone jumps on me for the "less maintenance", what I mean is that the time interval required for re application of varnish will be much longer than for an oiled finish.

The oil is much easier to apply, gives a very thin coating, takes damage easier because of that thin coating, requires a shorter maintenance cycle and offers less UV protection.

Obviously this is a long winded way of saying that varnish is hands down a better protection for gunnels (IMO) .... however, I think the real question here is how much protection is actually required.
- If your canoe lives inside when not being used ... that is huge reduction in UV exposure (maybe the largest possible)
- how often do you use the canoe and how much exposure does it get ... if you trip a couple times a year ... again, exposure is small

To me, the choice of a good spar varnish or an exterior oil needs to take a good look at the UV exposure, if you are out and about all the time and the boat is outside, use the best protection you can get ... if you store indoors and get out a couple of times a year, maybe you don't need the best protection and can get away with easier maintenance.

memaquay said:

Using oil is practical and easy if you keep up the maintenance schedule, but I prefer a more permanent treatment.

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Benson Gray said:

I prefer traditional marine spar varnish.

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I strongly agree. Especially because I have a lot of canoes with wood gunwales, which are mostly stored outside, and also because I quickly lost motivation to do the regular maintenance oiling that I wrongly thought I would do.

gumpus said:

One reason that Watco is durable for an oil finish is that it contains some varnish.

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That's right. Watco is mainly linseed oil, varnish, solvents and dryers. HERE is the Safety Data Sheet for Watco Teak Oil.

DougK said:

Mad River from an old website no longer in existence, see it on the Internet Archive -


All of my wood gunwales are oiled with Watco Teak, redo every year.
The Mad River Explorer gunnels had rotted away due to being stored outside for decades with no maintenance.. I put on new gunnels and confidently expect those to outlive me.
The Seda Scout used to have varnish but the previous owner didn't keep up, so the varnish had cracked and flaked away over the years. The wood is still in fairly good shape, some grey and open seamed-areas. After a good coat of oil the grayness is gone and the seams are not expanding.

I redid the varnish on a wood paddle a couple of years back, using a good marine spar varnish. It had lasted a decade or so, eventually the chips and flakes and water intrusion were starting to damage the wood just as MR notes above.

Now the interesting question to me is - it is standard practice to use spar varnish to finish split-cane bamboo fly rods. That varnish will last for decades, while the rod is flexed steadily and frequently whenever it is fished. Yet that varnish doesn't crack or leak, at least not for a couple of decades.

All varnishes are some combination of oils, resins, solvents.
Oils – Linseed Oil or Tung Oil
Resins – Alkyd, Phenolic, or Polyurethane
Solvents – Mineral Spirits, Naptha, or Paint Thinner
Epifanes varnish is what I usually put on fly rods and paddles. That is tung oil, phenolic resin, naptha and a bit of xylene.

Mad River gunwales, with flexed split-cane rod for comparison ;-)

View attachment 145204

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Interesting to read that MR quote.

In my observation, the penetration qualities of finishing oils are largely overstated, as is the inflexibility of varnishes. Neither are especially abrasion resistant, but varnish is unquestionably more so. The main reason I go with Watco Teak on gunwales is the same reason that I would otherwise use straight oil stain there. Gunwales tend to get rubbed against things a lot, and it's easier to apply without looking like a bad finish job than varnish.

As for the gray paddle edges, that will happen if either finish is breached and not maintained. I've obtained several used paddles that showed this damage when I got them, but after cleaning up and revarnishing, haven't gotten worse. Having a lot of extra paddles does allow some rotation between use and maintenance though, so there's that.

Paddle grips seem to be fine with plain old furniture oil.

Bottom line is, whatever works for you if you will maintain it.