SEALING OLD WOOD MUSSO DARTERS
 

Over the winter I purchased some old musso wood darters. I sanded them bare and want to repaint and re rig them. My question is how long do I soak them for sealing and how long do I wait to paint. I use a solution of 70% helmsman poly and 30% thinner. Thanks for your help Charlie.

Not sure this helps but I haven't had a lot of luck trying to seal maple (assuming that is what they are) with the helmsman mix. I've switched over to epoxy sealing for maple plugs and it seems to do a much better job of keeping the water out.

One issue I find sealing maple is after it's sealed you start assembly and scratch the surface say installing belly grommets , lip slots, through wires etc. This has happend to me with belly grommets pressing in hole. I don 't use maple much. Birch is a great substitute.

Maple can soak up a lot of sealer if you leave them in too long.
I soak for an hour or 2. I did some darters overnight once and when wired they wouldnt float as they had soaked up so much sealer.

For Darters I also have switched to epoxy sealing.

Few years ago I only had maple for a material to work with and did the spar / min spirit seal for about 15 min when no more bubbles were coming out of the plug body. I had several finished plugs split (soft maple) that were sealed with spar / ms. In the same run I also did a dozen darters and epoxy sealed (envirotex lite) them and had no splits. The following winter I tried Smith's CPES and had splits again when using soft maple, I do not think there are enough solids in either Spar/Ms or cpes to fill the voids in soft maple, at least not without a second bath in the sealer.

So now, for me at least, when I use soft maple I seal it with a 2 part epoxy.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

I'd soak them about an hour. When you paint them also use a q-tip and swirl some primer inside the hook holes. The plugs are still sealed inside the wire hole and hook hole unless you redrilled. It is water absorption through end grain that is the concern since that exposes the open ends of the wood tubules. The surface of the plug will be well sealed by paint and clearcoat. Even when this gets torn by hookswing water absorption is not major issue since the sides of the wood fibers themselves are not very permeable.