Ship Shape

Touching-up your chipped woodwork is clean, easy and quick using Tung Oil applied with a rag

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When it's properly maintained, a canoe's woodwork looks great, but if you don't treat chips and miscellaneous dings it soon becomes unsightly. Delay touching-up too long, and you risk those damaged spots becoming gray and staying that way, even if you apply fresh finish.

Here's an easy, no-mess way to do the frequent touching-up needed to keep a canoe's woodwork protected and looking spiffy.

Exterior grade Tung Oil is much easier to use for touching-up your woodwork than varnish.

Wipe it on to dry wood with a small piece of rag or J-cloth. No messy brush cleanup with nasty solvents—just discard the rag after soaking it in water.

Hold the rag during use with vinyl gloves, or simply protect your fingers inside a plastic bag.

Wipe the excess oil off the undamaged areas, but let it soak into the damaged parts and harden.

Soak the rag in water and discard it as per warnings on the can—it may be prone to spontaneous combustion!

Eventually you may want to refinish entirely with Tung Oil, which is less prone to chipping than varnish, and very easy to touch-up.

Scrape the old varnish off and sand the wood to remove any stained areas.

Thin the first application if instructions on the container allow—you want the oil to penetrate the wood as deeply as possible.

Wipe repeatedly with the oily rag to keep the first application wet as long as possible to allow deep penetration. Once this application has dried, the subsequent applications will sit mainly on top rather than soaking in!

Tung Oil purchased from a boat or paddling supplier is best, though paint-store UV-stabilized exterior-grade Tung Oil will do.

Article and photo © Keith Morton