Anyone evaluated the Ali Express "Synthetic Teak"

[Deep6]

Hey everyone,

I am seriously considering pulling up all my old glued and screwed teak that is likely too thin to resurface and putting down some synthetic teak product. My search has lead me to some of the synthetic teak products on Alibaba/AliExpress that for what I would consider reasonable money I can replace my entire top deck. There are rumours it shrinks and I'd be keen to hear of anyone that has used it over a longer period.

It's an Oyster 39 and thus has an entire teak deck. Apologies in advance to the heritage purists, I just can't afford 50K to replace the entire deck with real teak.

Thanks in advance

[Singularity]

I've looked much into the US-sourced synthetic products for toe-rail replacement. This blog shows a split failure resulting from ?contraction reasons.

I'm planning on doing my toerail with the same stuff, only using shorter segments (~5 feet each) where the holes for the fasteners are not round holes but rather little elongated (for/aft) holes-slots, allowing for expansion/contraction.

I have never looked into China stuff. Plasteak has quoted 50cents to 3 dollars per inch for the toerail stock (which is manufactured to have a grain look on the top). I have regular glass decks. If I was going to use a synthetic product for the deck...I'd look into locally sourced synthetic deck materials from a lumber place, trim/plane it down to size. But I'd try to keep the strips shorter at least, +/- slots instead of holes for the fasteners to allow for subtle movement associate with expansion/contraction.