removing teak decks

<table style="height:100%;" width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td class="Forum_PostBody_Alt" valign="top" width="80%" align="left" height="100%"><table style="height:100%;" width="100%" align="left" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" width="100%" align="left">Well I've decided to remove the teak from my forward deck and having never done any glass work I had a few questions.
1.What type of glass should I use? (spun,woven, what weight)?
2.What type of resin?
3.What do I need to do to prepare the existing surface for the new glass? My thought is I would ream out as many of the old screw holes as possible and fill them with epoxy, sand the entire area smooth and go from there. The reason for the new glass is to make up for some of the strength/stiffness from the old teak.
4.Is one layer of new glass enough if the old deck feels solid after removing the teak.
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The teak, in addition to providing an excellent surface for traction wet or dry and its aesthetic appeal, also adds strength to the deck of most boats. So if you remove the teak planking you almost always have to restore the strength it provided by adding layers of fiberglass on top of the fiberglass subdeck. A friend of mine who has a boat on our dock and was an engineer with Uniflite for many years told me that two layers of glass over the subdeck is generally sufficient.

Another fellow on our dock replaced the old teak deck on his Island Gypsy the other year. He put four layers of glass over the fiberglass subdeck. My ex-Uniflite friend helped him with this project in terms of planning and felt that four layers was way overkill. However the IG owner wanted a strong deck, so he went with the four layers. He did an absolutely beautiful job and finished it off by painting a purpose-made non-skid material on top. Based on its appearance I would say it's as good or better than anything a boat manufacturer would turn out. It took him a summer and a half of working pretty much every day to complete the job.

With regards to your question about how many layers of glass, if it was me I would go in search of someone with experience doing this, preferably including reworking the deck on a boat like yours. Because if you get it wrong and don't put enough layers on, it will be a lot of work to correct the mistake after the fact. My friend with all the boat manufacturing experience feels that two layers is normally sufficient. I trust his judgement and experience, but were we to do this on our boat, I'd want to get a second opinion from someone who's successfully replaced teak decks on our specific type of boat.

Instead of taking the old teak deck off, have you thought of adding a new deck onto top of?* The Eagle has a large teak front that is still OK but it is getting old weathered, taking a teak deck off is not easy, and then you probable will have to add some structure to replace the deck structure.* Maybe added some foam insulation between the old and new deck? In the winter we loose so much heat and the summer absorb the heat..* I was thinking of doing the same to the salon roof. In the winter I do place foam insulation*on top of the roof, which does help hold in the heat, and keepsthe cold rain off.


*
Anyway*I would think about adding some insulation/R factor?*

I removed the deak decks on a 34' boat I had many years ago. Hopefully you don't have any rotted core as that will have top be replaced too.

I was able to use a good wrecking bar to pry up the old boards. Then remove the left over screws with a cordless drill. As I remember I used two layers of 18Oz woven fiberglass cut up in about three foot sections and laying one over the other and insure overlaping seams. I used West System epoxy and lots of it. I then used a belt sander with 40 - 60 grit paper to smooth and level as needed. Lots of belts were needed!!! I then rolled on a few coats of epoxy and did a lite sanding with a orbital sander. Then I mixed up a thick batch of epoxy and radius the area between the house and the deck using an old pop can as a radius tool. Then I put an several coats of high build epoxy primer and sanded smooth. Then I painted the whole boat with Sterling paint using non skid materials in the paint on the deck. Sure looked great when it was done.

I would never do this again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dave

"So The teak, in addition to providing an excellent surface for traction wet or dry and its aesthetic appeal, also adds strength to the deck of most boats. So if you remove the teak planking you almost always have to restore the strength it provided by adding layers of fiberglass on top of the fiberglass subdeck."

Sometimes, remember many TT were yard built speculation hoping for a future customer.

The air boys would call it a "whitetail".

Since there was no knowledge of weather the teak slather would be called for (most knowledgible owners refused it) the boats were structurally as strong with or without a ton of teak piled on the deck.

A REAL teak deck, wont have the GRP slathered plywood under (to rot), it will be built as decks have been for hundreds of years.

FF