For glue you want to use lemon adhesive remover or wax and grease remover... however for regular boat staining I will tell you fantastic spray and either scotch brite or steel wool work AMAZINGLY!

I think the main reason the trade is so mysterious is because of the fact that not enough of us are willing to teach the trade. I recognized this at the onset of my career and vowed to do my part to help the next generation of artisans.

I seized that opportunity by landing an auto upholstery instructor position at a community college and I will say this about it. It was a blast and I highly recommend that more trimmers look into programs to either expand, build or create courses to offer the youth! I only resigned due to a relocation but I can promise you I'm not done yet and will continue to push that envelope even further once I get my new business fully established. (restart)

That all said, I have also of course trained many apprentices the "old skool" way in a shop environment and although it is certainly possible it is very difficult either way. My thought is simple, given a choice what shop owner (or any business owner ) would want to hire someone with literally no experience vs. hiring an individual with at least the BASIC CONCEPTS? (not to mention the interest shown...)
Education is the key, both as basic entry level programs but ALSO as Higher Learning! Too many of us essentially refuse to support the training programs that DO exist (albeit not many) for new hires and absolutely refuse to support our employees who want and need more training. (shame)

So if you like the mysticism associated with our industry, do nothing and it will continue.
However, If you are like me and support our exposure for the benefits it will reap, then I say look in the mirror. Take a long look and then ask yourself what YOU can do as an individual to dedicate a small portion of your workweek to training! Those of us willing to take our industry into the new millennium will do well because something I think we are overlooking here is the company size. As a business owner i'll take a crew of 15-20 people cranking out cars over the typical traditional small shop that's lucky to have 5-10 people (usually less) ANYDAY OF THE WEEK. As both a trimmer and shop owner the math is still working in our favor if we can GROW!

If we create a much larger pool of good trimmers, guess what??? all of the "good" shops will double and quadruple in size and the smaller traditional shops will become even smaller and more obscure. and again, everybody wins there. Most traditional guys like it that way and most guys like me just want to be able to grow into a larger scale business.

If you made it this far, Thanks for taking the time!