Bamboo Tips - Tips Area - Wraps
Finishing - Mixing Finishes

< Home < Tips Area < Wraps < Finishing < Mixing Finishes

I just did three thin coats of Varathane over Pearsalls orange and black jasper guide wraps. It preserved the color pretty well, but what is next? Do people leave it at that, or can I put a top coat of Man O War spar over it? I also have some Varmor, but I have grown to love the way man o war handles and looks on top of guide wraps. But can spar be applied over Varathane?  (Jeff Schaeffer)

More Varathane, Jeff. Once you have enough built up so that you can sand the wraps flat and scuff the surface, then you can apply a spar varnish to it. Once cured, polyurethane varnishes do not like for other things to adhere to them, not even other polyurethanes. Theirs is a solitary and lonely existence, lacking the generally gregarious nature of the Spar family.  (Martin-Darrell)

Are you sure you don't have that backwards?  I seem to have found that spar goes on quite nicely over scuffed poly, but the polyurethane won't stick to an oil based varnish.  (Harry Boyd)

Key word there was "scuffed", as we both noted. Spar does adhere as well as one might expect to scuffed poly, but poly's in their cured, unscuffed state don't want much of anything sticking to them.  (Martin-Darrell)