CONTINUOUSWAVE

I have a 1972 Sport 13. I am refinishing the helm as the varnish is old and has a few cracks. I want to protect it from damage. I understand I need to sand it down to bare wood.

Do I need to stain the mahogany again before applying the Z-Spar varnish?

My concern is matching the other wood pieces as I am not planning to refinish all the wood at this time. If I need to stain it what do you suggest I use to match what is already there?

After doing more digging through the old CW forum I found several threads on refinishing mahogany with a ton of good information. I will not be staining the wood. And I like the idea of using SS fender washers under the trim washers to avoid the trim washers cracking into my new varnish. I do have a little dark mildew around several of the screw holes which I will try to bleach out before refinishing.

I used to also use fender washers but found flanged finish washers which appear better and reduce the number of pieces.

Thanks BigBear, I found some of the SS flanged finish washers online.

Thank you Bigbear and PatSea for introducing me to something I had never heard of: flanged finish washers. They look like a good alternative to traditional finish washers.