It's been a busy few weeks partly due to having a week's holiday. We didn't go away but had friends come and stay for a week. However, I need to get back into working on Naiad whilst the temperature is just right for varnish, paint and epoxy.

Here I have used 80 grit sandpaper on a large wooden block to level off the varnish as much as is practical and then the sandpaper by hand to try and get to the remaining low spots.

The surface is now a lot better than before but I didn't want to go further than this or I would be removing too much of the varnish.

Before varnishing, however, I needed to clean off the dust and the small vacuum cleaner did the majority of the work.

Followed by a wipe over with a cloth soaked with white spirit to wipe away any remaining varnish dust.

And here it is with another coat of varnish applied.

And a closer look at the bridge deck. You can clearly see the corrugated perspex roof reflected in the varnish and most of the uneven surface has now gone. Once this has hardened I shall use the steel wool to remove the gloss and then add more coats of varnish, removing the gloss between each coat to stop the crawling varnish problem.

I also have the bottom board to sand and varnish, although one of them needs a small trim on one edge as it sticks if the board gets damp.

Then there is a fair bit of varnish on the boat that needs to be scraped down, sanded and recoated with a few layers of varnish. I expect to be getting through a lot of steel wool in the process!

Time for a cup of tea.