Bright work time.

Well the weather is getting fairly nice out during the day, so i decided to do some fixing of a couple bright work issue's on my toe rail scarfs. The question i have is what is the best course of action to make these water tight. I have two scarf joints that seperated and have 1 to 2 mm gap in the joint. Should i just fill it with epoxy and forget about it. Being the gap is so small. Do I open up the gap before trying to get epoxy in there.

You might do better with a flexible caulk,like Sikaflex. Find a product in the right color, put masking tape either side of the joint,and fill. I have used lesser qualities of household type painters non silicone caulk,provided you varnish over it you should still get longevity.

Do you have any experience with Gflex epoxy?

senangsekali said:

Do you have any experience with Gflex epoxy?

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No,I`d not heard of it before you mentioned it. Flexible epoxy? Why not?

Yes, its pricy and i never used it before. I heard good things about. I wonder if someone on TF has any experience with.

I have a couple of scarf joints on my teak caprail that are continual trouble. Seems the longest lasting solution was to clean the teak edges that make up the gap with a Fein tool fine saw blade. Just wide enough to get to clean wood and straighten the edges, about 1/8". Then masked the edges and overfilled with liquid black polysulfide to form a bead. Let it cure (like 3-5 days) then razor cut & sand flush with the varnished surface, then varnish over when refinishing the caprail. Still, the joint has a tendency to crack, but the polysulfide helps to keep the water from getting into the wood. The wider the gap, the less likely it seems to crack. You'll see similar joint treatment on the likes of Fleming and Marlowe, with their wide teak caprails, but those joints are closer to 1/4" wide, but varnished. Scarf joints are the bane of varnish work!

Too cold for varnish yet. Soon, soon...

Yes not varnishing yet but want to fix the scarfs.

I did small section of Cetol last week, there is so much pollen in the air from nearby Oak trees that it turned out like sandpaper. I'll have to put that off for a while.

Don't discount cold weather varnishing! I've done it when I had to wait for frost to go off the surface to start- barely in the 40's. Had to add some drier to the varnish, but the cold really allows the varish to float out. Smoothest surface I ever ended up with! No bugs!

So i began today with removing the stantions and stripping the cetol off of the scarf joints. I am using a fine tooth jigsaw blade to clean out the joints. So far so good. I did notice, as soon as i removed the cetol down to bare wood there was quite a bit of damp wood under the bad spots

So i inquired around and was tild to use cold cure epoxy. One, its colder out. Two, it has a little flexibility in it.

I opened up the scarf joint with a Fein saw, sealed with a liquid epoxy then filled with Teak Decking systems caulk. Best I think to get a several coats of varnish or Cetol on the bright work before hand.

Jim

JDCAVE said:

I opened up the scarf joint with a Fein saw, sealed with a liquid epoxy then filled with Teak Decking systems caulk. Best I think to get a several coats of varnish or Cetol on the bright work before hand. View attachment 73727

Jim

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Do you mean to put cetol on before the epoxy?

That’s what I did. My shipwright recommended using the epoxy to seal the exposed teak grain in the joint before using the TDS caulk. I applied it with a modelling paint brush. It seemed to work.

JDCAVE said:

I opened up the scarf joint with a Fein saw, sealed with a liquid epoxy then filled with Teak Decking systems caulk. Best I think to get a several coats of varnish or Cetol on the bright work before hand. View attachment 73727

Jim

Click to expand...

So, which Fein saw blade did you use? How deep a cut? How did you dig out the cutting?

When we put new cap rail on I left about 3/16” gap between joints . Epoxied the end grain and used TDS caulk.

most of ny scarfs are perfect. But i have a few that opened up with the movment of the boat over time.

Well a quick update on the scarfs. Did the fill with epoxy and sanded it. Now i put a skim coat over to fill in some some pits.

Finished. First coat of cetol light on.

rail time

Nice work!

all done.