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Old 03-26-2015, 08:57 PM   #6
Marin
Scraping Paint
 
City: -
Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 13,745
We bailed on using varnish on our boat some 15 years ago. Since then we have used only Bristol on the exterior teak. For wood we take back to raw, we use two coats of CPES followed by the first coat of Bristol when the CPES is still a bit tacky.

We have found that the best way to remove old finish, be it varnish or Bristol, is to use a heat gun and scrapers. This minimizes (or eliminates) the amount of wood that is removed.

My wife is the heat gun/scraper artist of two of us and when she's through removing the old finish all I need to do is give the raw wood a finish sanding by hand with 220 grit and it's ready for the first coat of CPES.

We have found that in this climate, at least, Bristol outlasts varnish by a factor of years. We have some pieces of exterior teak that were refinished with 8 to 10 coats of Bristol some 10 years ago or more. The finish is still holding up.

However.... Bristol is just as susceptible to lifting if moisture gets underneath it which is why it is critical to bed teak trim, grab rails, etc. properly to the fiberglass. And joints in cap and hand rails need to be sealed correctly or the movement of the joints will let moisure in under the finish.

As for Cetol, we've seen how it holds up and looks on several boats around us in our harbor, and we would never use it. If Bristol wasn't available we'd use varnish before we used Cetol.
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