As with life, antique and classic wooden boat preservation is a convoluted, incredibly complex and ever-changing journey. In our experience, there never is one right way. Indeed, as with economists, ask five expert wooden boat preservationists how to do this or that, and invariably you will get nine conflicting answers.
Snake Mountain Boatworks’ methods and materials evolve constantly as we learn from reading “how-to” articles written by, and listening to other voices like Don Danenberg’s. No, they do not always, or even usually agree.
In short, while some methods or materials, viz., using stainless steel fasteners below the waterline, can be proven as absolutely wrong, and Don Danenberg has done so, rarely, if ever, do we encounter that which is universally correct method or material.
It is in that spirit that our Website includes its “How-To” section where we offer the inside stories about how we do this or that without declaring that our way is correct and all others are at best flawed.
Be that as it may, as it is constituted now, the section offers but one voice, ours. No longer. Mike Mayer, who owns and operates the Lake Oswego Boat Company, in Oregon.
This video will introduce Mike and his mission to you. You may know Mike through the line of Gel Stain that he has innovated and we now are standardized upon.
Reading through a “Here’s-how-I-do-it” piece Mike wrote gave me an epiphany of sorts. Creating a new, other voices, component to our “How-To” section, one that offered the thinking, methods and materials used by other restorers and in other shops like ours, would give visitors access to a deeper experience.
Mike’s, “How To Stain And Varnish” is the inaugural guest post in “Here’s How We Do It – Other
Voices.” Others will follow. Submissions are invited.
