Restoring exterior teak rails

jbuck said:

I've got a bottle of this to test, pure tung lil no additives. How did you apply it ? It says thin the first coat with white spirit.

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just rubbed t on with a rag..no thinning..it soaked right in...

jbuck said:

I was considering pure tung oil. I know there are many different solutions. What's your view?

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It really depends on what look you are going for and how much work you are willing to do to keep that look. A classic deep glossy clear look, matt finish, oiled finish, etc.?

What's the weather like where you'll be keeping the boat? Also ask those in the area whst they use on their teak and how they like it.

angus99 said:

I attended a seminar today at the Defever rendezvous in Palm Beach. The advice was never to use anything coarser than 120 or 150. The coarser the paper, they said, the deeper the grooves you're cutting and the more you have to sand to return to perfectly smooth. If you're a member of the Defever forum, there are several guys who have done a lot of teak work who can share their techniques.

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Thank you i follow the site and will get in touch with them.

gwkiwi said:

Also mentioned was watch how close the heat gun gets to the glass you wouldn't be the first to crack a pane of glass from the heat.

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Right! And they were quoting 1 boat unit per pane to replace (which I believe included labor).

I have a can of "Hope's 100% Tung Oil. But it says in smaller print (but not small print) "for interior use".
Anybody have any idea why they say "for interior use"?

My wife Chris does the teak. She brings the color back by applying a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, baking powder and apple cider vinegar. She applies the mixture, waits a bit and then scrapes w a putty knife that dosn't have a sharp edge. She does about 14" of cap rail at a time. Wire brushing helps at times. One must be careful w the mixture as it's strong stuff. She rinses the wood w a very wet (water) cloth/towel when done.

No sanding or store chemicals and no sharp edge scrapping required other than perp for finishing. And the good scrapers are the ones w tungsten carbide blades. They last an unbelievably long time. Definitely don't pressure wash. Pressure washing should IMO be very limited as water gets behind rubber seals, between cracks and joints to enter places that in time causes lots of damage.

After Chris's cleaning she applies varnish by the traditional method of thinning the first or the first several coats of varnish.

If you do want the really smooth boat show kind of finnish wet sand (3 or 400 grit) with thinned varnish and wipe. Your sandings will enter the low spots and/or cracks. If you put enough effort into it a very glass like smooth surface will result.

If some one wants to they can make their own oil finish by mixing equal parts boiled linseed oil, turpentine and a good oil based gloss varnish.

Bill I did that for several years in Alaska.
Worked quite well but I needed to re-coat about every two months.
And the surface was slightly tacky. I used raw LO though and no more than about 10% varnish. Mostly LO and turp.

I'm with Mark, and the PO of my Hatteras, the latter of whom took the massive forward rails off and replaced them with stainless, just leaving the rails aft of the pilot house doors teak (which were then covered most of the time with Sunbrella, removed for special occasions for show. Win-win, IMO. Painting them is only a slight improvement over properly varnishing them, and I have, unlike my friend Bill, never seen it look right. Not to mention it is easier to hang stuff off a stainless tube rail, with less residual damage, than a wood one. Love 'em or leave 'em!

We, or rather my wife who's the heat gun artist, use a heat gun and various kinds of scrapers. Never has a problem getting all the old finish off without removing any wood. She uses different degrees of heat depending on the tenacity of different sections of finish.

Once she's done I give the bare wood a light hand sanding with 220 grit paper, then apply two coats of CPES followed by the first coat of finish while the second coat of CPES is still tacky.

That's it and it works perfectly every time.

Source for Scrapers

I suggest you check out Lee Valley (leevalley.com). Great source for all kinds of woodworking tools. They have a large selection of scrapers - card, straight, curved, with or without handles... Good company to deal with and a little slice of heaven for hand tool fanatics.
_______________
Dick

Thank-you for all the advice.I'll ask locally what people tend to have as a finish.
There seems to be a great range of scrapers.I'll get them posted direct to croatia as i bet the airline will take them off me if i try to carry them on , its a hand luggage only trip in may.
I'll post the results.

Opu said:

I suggest you check out Lee Valley (leevalley.com). Great source for all kinds of woodworking tools. They have a large selection of scrapers - card, straight, curved, with or without handles... Good company to deal with and a little slice of heaven for hand tool fanatics.
_______________
Dick

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Thanks alot, Dick! That post just cost me $100 in scrapers and supplies!

I am in the process of " testing " pure tung oil. Last summer I coated the teak aft deck hatches with three coats over a few days to see how it would weather. If there has been ANY change at all they are slightly darker than first applied. The stern of my boat is backed in and has full southern exposure, there is the overhanging roof ( Europa style ) but it is getting full weather.

So far I am really pleased and will do a final prep on the flybridge handrails this spring and also coat them with Tung oil.

Having previously had a fully varnished Grand Banks and a Cheoy Lee sailboat I am damn tired of doing bright varnish ( but I do love the look ) and I am not sold on just letting it silver out so the Tung oil is a alternative.
HOLLYWOOD

FlyWright said:

Thanks alot, Dick! That post just cost me $100 in scrapers and supplies!

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FW you're in trouble now . You will start getting lee valley catalogs in the mail . Lee valley is for the distinguished wood worker . The kind that wears a leather apron , safety googles and keeps a clean shop . A wood hacker like me is not worthy to shop there .

Thanks for the input HOLLYWOOD and I'll be looking for the follow up.

Tung oil need not be "pure". You could use your own additives like turpentine, other oils, Japan drier or a bit of varnish if you are looking for more build. Turpentine would reduce fungus and increase penetration. Or even a stain.

The thing to be very careful of with an oil finish is that it will attract dirt and grit. Not such a big deal on handrails and such but on a teak deck the dirt and grit combine with the oil to make a great cutting compound when you walk on it. In the areas with a lot of foot traffic the dirt and grit will get ground into the wood and this will wear away wood cells. And wood cells that go away never come back.

I've seen one instance where a fellow oiled his teak deck (sailboat) and after a few years there were visible shallow "troughs" in the wood where the most foot traffic was along the side decks.

This boat was kept outside where plenty of dirt, grit, and soot landed on it. Had the boat been boathouse kept the situation would not have gotten so far so fast although the oil still would have held everything that landed on it in terms of dirt and grit.

The other thing to keep an eye on is how the oil might affect the adhesion of the deck seam material to the sides of the grooves. If it allows the sealant to lose adhesion and pull away from the wood, moisture can start getting down under the planks which is a Bad Thing on a screwed-down deck.

Marin,
I don't remember dirt or a problem w it but I certianly didn't put it on my decks ...... and I wouldn't have had my deck been wood.

And I wouldn't recomend oiling wood inside the cabin either.

A simple one inch scraper and a file to keep it sharp. One is home made the other store bought. Uses standard Red Devil 1" blades.

When kept sharp it will leave shavings like a plane. I scraped three boards wide in a room 21 feet long X 13 feet wide in just over 20 minutes

Rob

""""""A wood hacker like me is not worthy to shop there"""""""""""

Lots of wood hackers, in my case-butcher, shop there. How do i know.

What you call Red Devil scrapers , I know as Richards. The blade looks the same and they work very well. The handle is different although i could add a long handle like yours, just have never needed to.

A fine file, some practice, heavy filing pressure, maybe a burr roller and they peel of a shaving very well and cleanly and with less damage than any other scraper i have tried.. Far faster than the video with the flat scraper; I have those too. Be carefull though as they can dig if you use the blade corner too hard.

I usually use the 1" wide scraper and keep two or even three at the ready. When all three need resharpening then they all get redone. Saves time vs using and sharpening only one at a time.

I do have 2" wide and use those too but not as much. The 3" is too much normally.

The Richards scrapers are usually quite inexpensive. Replacement blades can be purchased when the originals die or rather,are filed to death.

FlyWright said:

Thanks alot, Dick! That post just cost me $100 in scrapers and supplies!

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Gee, Al, that's only 1/10 of a boat buck.

Good timing on this thread!

Things are getting buttoned up with the more important systems, and it is now time to make Badger purdy. Had a couple dry sunny days when house renovations didn't trump boat time, and the exterior teak tweaking has begun...(PO's masking tape technique is adding to the workload!)

Murray,
That teak should be a breeze to make "purdy". The cap rails on Willy were black after two years on the hard and Chris brought them back to bright wood. The problem you've got is finding varnishing weather. In Thorne Bay the boat would sit there in the rain w nice varnished wood but we'd have to use our cruising weather to varnish. The last "varnish" I tried was a half varnish and half oil product called "Sea Finn" by Dayly's in Seattle. It went south just like the others. I finally decided anything w some build soon needed to be scraped off .......... So I went to oil.

We didn't varnish because we choose not to. With luck it can be done .. w timing. You know how some years have much better weather than others .... on those years you can varnish (ect) AND play. But we're usually so drunk w the joy of such good weather we just play the whole time. Remember 2003? But if the weather is dry in July how are you going to know it will be dry in August?

I have a friend west of Craig that fiberglassed over his cap rails on a Willard 30. I never was tempted to do that .. mostly because it would be a big job. But oil remains an option.

Our cap rails are in pretty good shape except for areas like those shown in the attached pics. Is there anything that I can do to repair these areas, or do I have to remove all of the varnish and start with bare wood?


Mike Metts
KK 42-165
Virginia Beach, VA

Sent from my iPad using Trawler Forum

Greetings,
Mr. MM. If it were me, I'd scrape and prep the areas and feather in a number of coats of varnish finishing with 1 overcoat along the whole rail. Could be an exercise in futility if the varnish keeps cracking at those seams but it WILL get protection while the new varnish is intact.

RT Firefly said:

Greetings,
Mr. MM. If it were me, I'd scrape and prep the areas and feather in a number of coats of varnish finishing with 1 overcoat along the whole rail. Could be an exercise in futility if the varnish keeps cracking at those seams but it WILL get protection while the new varnish is intact.

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+1 RT!

I would remove the stanchion base to get the varnish film to the edge of the wood. It may be possible to take out the screws or bolts and push the support to the side while you prep and coat.

Rob

Greetings.
Mr. D. Good suggestion IF Mr. MM can and wishes to go to that extent keeping in mind the stanchion and screws should be properly bedded afterwards. From MY experience the failure of the coating initiates at the seam in the wood and I don't think Mr. MM would gain a whole lot to eliminate future problems by going the route you suggest. The finish is still going to crack at the seam IMO. About the only thing to totally eliminate this particular problem is too rout out the crack and fill it with a suitable seaming compound similar to what is done for teak deck seams.

Mr. RT,

You are most likely correct. However my wife does call me Mr. Anal….

Rob

RT Firefly said:

... About the only thing to totally eliminate this particular problem is too rout out the crack and fill it with a suitable seaming compound similar to what is done for teak deck seams.

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Yup. That's we did. I used a Dremel tool with a cutting bit to open the seam(s) up to about the size of 1/2 dollar, filled with TDS and then refinished over it.

Larry M said:

Yup. That's we did. I used a Dremel tool with a cutting bit to open the seam(s) up to about the size of 1/2 dollar, filled with TDS and then refinished over it.

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That's the correct way to do it. The ONLY way to prevent the finish from cracking again and letting moisture get under and lift it is to redo the seam.

The end grain sucks up moisture like a sponge . If the joint is too tight there's not enough room for a decent amount of caulk. If you can open up the joint like others have suggested maybe you ca get enough caulk in to do some good . I like at least an 1/8 " gap in caulk joints .