Teak Step Mod

Greetings all,

The small set of steps leading to the mid deck were in pretty bad shape. They suffered from the original factory joinery and mounting method.

The treads were planed to a uniform thickness and refastened with a filler strip epoxied into the dado. Corner gussets were epoxied in on top to prevent water from pooling at the joint and on the underside to beef up the thinned treads. I held the large bottom gussets 1/8" in from the back to allow space for stainless mounting tabs. This mounting is nearly blind and will make removal for the next re-coat a snap.

Another minor mod was to epoxy an 1/8" piece of teak across the end grain on the bottom of the step stingers.

Hope this helps.

Nicely done! I'm not a fan of exterior wood, but clearly you have improved the design and did a nice job refinishing it.

Ted

Nice work, Eric!

Uh-oh! Now the rest of the Californian joinery will stand out in its inferiority!

Mighty fine job! What did you use for the finish and are you gonna have to freshen up the rest of the brightwork?

Thanks guys, it's incremental progress.

Ted, the re-fit of Slow Hand is masterful. At some point down the road I may consider encapsulating some of the wood.

Al, I've been eating that Elephant one bite at a time...hopefully it will pay dividends at the next re-coat. The aft cabin door is next on the list to be re-built from scratch.

John & Tracey, I've been using two coats of System 3 laminating epoxy followed by 5-6 coats of their gloss spar varnish. I'm still in the reclamation phase. Last year the toe & cap rails, bow pulpit, cabin doors and FB steps were tackled. This year it's been all new FB cap & rail and the aft cabin steps. Currently I'm re-plugging every hole along the lower bull nose that runs parallel to the toe rail before refacing with new wood between the two.

Nice work, Eric.

I have done copious amounts of brightwork, only to see it all eventually fail.

I am going to buy Aerospace 303 protectant from Amazon and spray it on my woodwork, inside and out.
Supposedly protects against UV sunlight damage.
I have tried the spar varnishes and of course epoxy. But even inside if sunlight thru glass hits the wood, it eventually gets ruined. Quicker if it gets wet too.

I have moved away from varnish or polyurethane to using ZEP high traffic floor polish. I get a gallon for $16. Makes a nice gloss on everything. On wood, I have been using a Minwax stain, then coat on 3 to 5 coats of the Zep. Zep is waterproof. People use it on RV's. Outside the RV folk say after year needs more coats. Zep is an acrylic finish, and very easy to use. Every coat seems to melt into the old coats a little bit.

It definitely and easily makes a good glossy look. It is water based acrylic clear coat.
Even many coat dries to a crystal clear look.

Nice work Eric . That's a good idea on the end grain .That end grain can act like a
sponge when sitting flat on the deck .