Can't get rid of varnish smell on new racks

i built two 41 qt. racks for 12 adult female ball pythons that im picking up soon. the racks are made from particle board treated with a marine grade varnish. i was recommended this technique from the owners of a reptile store where i shop. its been about a month since i built them and i can still smell varnish in the tubs. there is no snakes in the rack yet for this reason but im convinced the smell is not going to get any better anytime soon. do you think this is safe for me to make my purchase and put the animals in.....any ideas on getting rid of the smell?...thanks

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by nor_cal1980

i built two 41 qt. racks for 12 adult female ball pythons that im picking up soon. the racks are made from particle board treated with a marine grade varnish. i was recommended this technique from the owners of a reptile store where i shop. its been about a month since i built them and i can still smell varnish in the tubs. there is no snakes in the rack yet for this reason but im convinced the smell is not going to get any better anytime soon. do you think this is safe for me to make my purchase and put the animals in.....any ideas on getting rid of the smell?...thanks

---

Heat and ventilation will help speed up the curing process, but if you are using Spar Urethane, it can take up to 2 months to finish outgassing. Since it is Winter, setting them out in the sun and wind is probably not going to help much. The only idea that I can come up with is maybe use a space heater to heat the room up that they are in and keep some fans blowing on them. You might also try contacting the manufacturer and see if they have any recommendations...

Spar varnish is a odd beast it also never gets really hard it is designed to flex (spar like a boat mast) they as Vypyrz stated take a long time to fully cure. Heat and air is the only way and at that is will take a while, when I was younger I built boat for a living and we used a drying shed that was in the mid 80's with barn vents on the ends it would take a week before it was hard enough to move. Exactly what varnish did you use? (for your sake I hope it wasn't deks olje great stuff on a boat but it out gasses for years)

Marine grade stuff is pretty old school, we have stuff now-a-days that dries over night and finishes out gassing over a couple of days that works just fine for what we use it for. water based and enamel based. like they said bout all you can do is heat it up and vent it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kitedemon

Spar varnish is a odd beast it also never gets really hard it is designed to flex (spar like a boat mast) they as Vypyrz stated take a long time to fully cure. Heat and air is the only way and at that is will take a while, when I was younger I built boat for a living and we used a drying shed that was in the mid 80's with barn vents on the ends it would take a week before it was hard enough to move. Exactly what varnish did you use? (for your sake I hope it wasn't deks olje great stuff on a boat but it out gasses for years)

---

I actually did use spar varnish. The brand is Cabot. I tried the space heater method. I put both of the racks into a walk in closet with a 1200 watt space heater full blast for about two weeks and really didn't notice any difference. The fumes in the tubs are so bad when I pull them out and smell them it actually burns my nose a little. I've come up with a solution the seems like its gonna work out pretty good. I turned the racks upside down and im covering all the varnished areas with hvac tape. I got about half way through the first rack before running out of tape but seems to be working great....thanks for the input.

About half way done with sealing up the first rack...http://i660.photobucket.com/albums/u...0/GEDC0603.jpg
http://i660.photobucket.com/albums/u...0/GEDC0604.jpg

A second thought would be to paint or regular varnish over it. Something like varathane colours in plastic might work.