Cetol Convert

[SailWiz]

Hello all, I've been away for awhile but wanted to extole the virtues of Cetol. I was never a big fan of the stuff but after sanding my toe rail to bare wood, and putting the final coat of gloss over the Cetol stain, I am Convinced. It was easy to apply and looks gorgeous. I have become a varnishing fool. Thought about varnishing myself but the first mate wouldn't let me.

[ssullivan]

I love the stuff too! Developed a taste for it with my first boat, and all 2 square feet of teak it had. Lasts quite a while when applied properly. We just used it on our boat.

[Alan Wheeler]

Sean, was the tung oil made by Cetol?? Cetol is a very good product range.

[ssullivan]

No, Wheels. The tung oil comes from the seed of the tung trees, Aleurites fordii and Aleurites montana. It's an all natural oil - safe enough to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.

I didn't need gloves or anything to apply it. Used my bare hands and a rag.

Here's a link:

http://www.realmilkpaint.com/oil.html

[Steve Rust]

I like the Cetol Light as it has less pigment than regular Cetol and tends to give the wood a more natural color. I suppose with less pigment it may not last as long but here in the Midwest I can go a few years between coats after the intiail three coats.

[Pblais]

I love - hate Cetol. I hate that tt's a lot of work but it's easier than all the rest. Forgives though you can't forget to keep it up. Just don't be foolish and think you can get by with just the gloss. On my boat the regular looks better than the light. If you have brand new wood all even then the light looks better. I only use the gloss in the places people in the cockpit can see. Otherwise I just keep up with the regular all the way around the cap rail.

[Jon D]

Admittedly I don't have a lot of teak, around the companionway, a bit at the wheel and a frame for a cockpit locker and I'm not a Cetol fan.

We have used almost everything over the years and what I don't like about Cetol is that it colors the wood. We have switched back to varnish [Epiphanes]. Yes it's more work initially but once it's built up then it's a one or max two times per year project to add another coat. And IMHO it looks so much better. OTOH if I had lots of teak like a big caprail I might rethink and do Cetol in some places and varnish where the look of the brightwork really matters to me.

[Richhh]

mmmmmmmm
When I bought my 'teakey' 6 years ago, I chipped, stripped, sanded, scraped, blasted and scoured every bit of cracked, faded, lifted, and butt ugly Cetol from my boat.
I applied one of the 'modern' 2part + 2part urethane/arcylics (Honey Teak) and havent looked back. The 'moderns' only require an occasional (yearly) top coat of clear 2part (just scuff with a scotchbrite pad and youre ready to slather). The nice thing about these 'moderns' is that since they are catalyzed you can apply several coats in the same day.
I elect to do the maintenance overcoat extra heavy every two years and simply powerbuff in between.
The stuff looks (almost) like varnish, can be hand rubbed so that the wood patina 'glows' with irridescence, can be power-buffed ...... and during the whole 6 years since have only had to do one major 'repair'. The stuff is expensive for first cost but when amortized over 5 or 6 years is probably the cheapest and longest lasting and least labor intensive of all .... and its almost as good looking as a prime varnish job (enough to make a Hinckley blush with envy) .

Personally, I think Cetol belongs on barn floors; Cetol 'light' on garage floors - the stuff is worse than butt ugly. You might just as well use a thinned-out brown/orange alkyd enamel --- because thats what it is.

Honey Teak ... www.signaturefinish.com
Smith & Co. 5 Year Clear (dunno the URL)

[ronbo1]

I've used Cetol for many years and find it's very durable, requiring just a yearly maintenance coat of Gloss over Cetol Regular. Trick is not to have too many coats of Cetol build up as the pigment will mask the wood grain.

A knowledgable boatbuilder told me Cetol Light doesn't have less pigment as many of us thought, but white pigment added to give it that 'light' look. So it doesn't really allow more grain to show. Good marketing.

[Talbot]

Its not as good as Coelan (but probably cheaper)

[Alan Wheeler]

Maybe we are atalking a different product here. Cetol in NZ is a manufacturers name and they have may products. The Cetol I am thinking of, is a clear oil. But then maybe I am thinking of the wrong thing compleatly. I'll take another look next time I am at the hardware shop.

[ssullivan]

Wheels,

Cetol (which is the product name, not the name of the company here in the States) is made by the following company:

http://www.sikkens.com/

Since I didn't find it on the site, here is a link to what the can looks like:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ance&n=3375251

[Euro Cruiser]

I notice that we're talking very generically about Cetol when, in reality, it's performance is a function of several major variables.

Personal aethestics aside (not everyone agrees on what is 'butt ugly'...), all these teak treatments can seem to perform well when conditions are benign but they quickly show their limitations when the boat is more heavily used, when they get fewer fresh water rinse-offs, when the wood sees a bit of chafe, when humidity climbs, and certainly when the boat's location changes and U/V exposure increases (or the temperature drops).

A friend invested much effort & time in doing the two-part varnish-like application (similar to Honey Teak) and found it quickly cracking once he got into hotter, more tropical environs. Still in denial, he invested $$ this time and had the job redone in Trinidad, only to find it failed again in short order. Wood expands at different rates between joints, water works its way in, and there we go. Yet two-part coatings are very, very hard and so much tougher to remove and replace.

I was a big Cetol fan - sealer, then gloss - and found I only needed to treat our teak once a year while in Florida; got lots of compliments, too. The owner of a Hess-designed BC 28 Cutter stopped by one day while I was doing my maintenance coat and really dissed Cetol. BC 28's have lots of wood and he'd gone down to bare wood twice, doing the 3 + 3 regimen, only to have it fail within 6 months. Strange, I thought...at first. Later, when we found Cetol wouldn't last a year in the Caribbean - and we were using the boat regularly, where wear is relentless - I thought about this some more. Both his applications were done while out cruising, and they probably didn't have enough fresh water to clean up the wood before application. Salt must be a problem. I went back to fresh wood in Trinidad (at a marina with unlimited fresh water), then recoated 3 + 3 but found it didn't last more than 6 months...and wondered if the environment alone (humid, salty, damn hot while we sailed across the breadth of the Caribbean) was part of the explanation, along with heavy use and lots of U/V.

When we left for Europe, WHOOSH's trim looked great. After 6 more months, it again looked badly & I simply gave up and went back to the 'Scandanavian look', at least for now. (Clean, bare teak, occasionally lightly scrubbed and lightened with a light treatment of oxalic acid). This time it was the reverse climatic circumstance: much spottier weather, colder temps and so difficult to get the coats down properly, lots of wet conditions (from the skies and the sea), and again regular and so heavy use. E.g. rafting over here is very common (2 boats are outside us as I write this) and it's quite difficult to keep the lines and shoes from taking a toll on the bright work (which most boats don't have, and so owners are 'unenlightened' on this subject).

Overall, I find Cetol to be a good product and suitable for most boats' teak simply because most boats are not heavily used. But let's see what Jon, Sean and others think after they've worked their boats down South for an extended period. IME heavy use and bright, shiny teak are a tough combination to stick with, altho' charter boats with active professional crews certainly pull it off.

Jack

[SailWiz]

Well all, Butt Ugly aside, My toe rail looks fantastic. I had never been a fan of Cetol as I said in my first post however, using the Cetol Light has changed my view. I've just finished the job and she looks great and I'm happy with the way she looks. After all, thats why I did it. Time wll tell if its the right choice.

[lilly]

I've just bought a 35' Lion Class Cheoy Lee. 'Teak on teak. Everything is teak. The problem is the poor boat was neglected for six years and the cabin sides and decks are almost black with mildew. I need some advice on what to do to bring the cabin sides back to a nice 'red' look. Of course I'll leave the decks natural but how best to clean them. The interior isn't so bad but lots of the teak has a whitish mold or something on it. How best to deal with that? There's intricate carving everywhere. How do I clean that without gumming up the carving?
Thanks for any advice.