Hello again. Loooooong time no post; at least not on this thread.

I finally decided to do something about the orange varnish. It still wasn't setting and I was really unhappy with the colour. Having one of the first sunny days this year where I didn't have something to do that prevented me being in the garden, I got out the 5 boards, a washing up bowl full of terps and several brushes, sponges and scouring pads. Once again, everything did not go to plan as such.

Apparently the set varnish is completely impervious to terps, so I had to rip through the skin on the deeper bits before I could clean out the rest of the gunk. On the other hand, it also did nothing to the paint underneath, which was a blessing of sorts.




These two boards are fully cleaned up. As you can see, I didn't manage to get rid of all of the orange, but I am hoping that the remaining patches will just look like a floor covered with dead weeds or a different type of soil or something when it is all under the water layers.



I just about managed to get all of the detail out. There are still some skulls with orange patches, but that isn't inconsistent with pictures of underwater human remains I used for reference when painting the skulls in the first place, so I'm not too worried about it. You can't quite tell from this picture, but there are a few patches where the scourer took off the layer of paint leaving grey patches on the skulls and a few of the rocks. As it turns out, they look a lot like highlights on the skulls anyway, so again, I'm not too fussed.



The other three boards I was working on. As I post this, they have all been taken up to the same level as the other two boards. With the top most board there I will probably add more brown paint/sand mix to cover up some of the remaining orange. Apart from that, I'm fairly happy with how the boards have cleaned up. What I'll be doing is using the 6th board as a tester for the new clear varnish (bought from a far more reputable store, so should actually be clear this time!) and see how much it looks like water.

TTFN

Shades