I am finally going to re-varnish my Artic Tern after 6 years, a lot of the time it was exposed on top of my truck while we traveled in the south. I seem to remember a previous post that said I could scrape the old varnish off and then sand and re-varnish. The posts said that the varnish would be softer than the epoxy and that I wouldn't have any trouble scraping it. Is this still true?

Once I have the old varnish off, I would like to put a design on the kayak since I didn't do it when I first built it. Can I burn a design into the epoxy and fiberglass with a pyrography tool or should I just paint or paste a design on it and then varnish over it?

I'm also getting delivery of a Pygmy Osprey Standard kit on Tuesday. Two projects at once, if you don't consider my 14' Great Auk for which I have the hull done but nothing else in a year. On the Osprey, I hope to burn a picture of an Osprey into the wood before I epoxy it.

Charles Robinson