In Over My Head with Teak

[rebel heart]

Originally Posted by tager

Hand sanding is superior to using a random orbit sander. You will find that most of the surfaces are curved and intricate anyway. Really all the 220 does is smooth out any scraper marks, which only appear due to bad technique, and provide a tooth for the initial coat.

Rebel heart, what sealant do you use?

I even wear a mask for the heat-gun and scraper part, and sanding part. Can't be too careful.

Total agreement on the masks. I wear one now for nearly everything I do. Averaging 500 hours of work a year you'd be crazy do do that breathing all kind of garbage. I've been thinking of upgrading from disposables to something more powerful with replaceable cartridges for when working with paint and solvents.

I've used semco with good results as far as sealants go. I've bypassed using a sealant on a couple of sections before I knew what I was doing. I'll see how long those last....

[Joli]

Mike, are you at Brands?

The problem you're having is the cold, we still have frost warnings. The epoxy will not set for some time in this cold. You have the teak sealed, don't worry about it, when it sits in the sun for a bit it'll harden up. Worse come to worse you sand and varnish when the boat is in the water. Move on to the next job.

Nice of the guys to let you be inside while doing the job.

[Bloodhound]

Am just finishing up stripping teak cap and rub rails, dorade boxes, grab rails and pin rails on our Westsail 32. They were all painted (thankfully over a coat of varnish). Heat gun and a SHARP scraper seem to be the way to go. A light sanding with 60 grit, followed by 80 and 120, then a couple of coats of Teak Oil seem to give a nice result. Not glossy, but very easy to touch up. Whenever I have the brush out everything gets a very light coat and a rub down. The hope is not to scrape-strip ever again. Eight months after the first pieces were done, all looks good. Will reserve judgement until after a summer of blazing sun. Anyone have positive/negative experience with this approach?

[tager]

The scraper must have a carbide blade. Not stainless or other soft steel.

I wear an organic vapor cartridge respirator for nearly anything on the boat. Heating paint and varnish with a heat gun, sanding anything, applying finishes or resin. All of these introduce toxic compounds into the air around you. At ten bucks a crack, the filters are cheap. It's not expensive to keep your lungs, and central nervous system happy, so why not do it?

OSHA suggests that the filters are replaced each work day. I don't do that, but I don't work 8 hour days in a paint tent either. I replace filters as soon as I can smell hints of fumes through them.

Get the respirator, it's a good investment.

[boatsmith]

We do this stuff for a living and we have our methods which work for us. There are other ways that other folks do things that work for them. We sometimes use chemical strippers, especially for areas with lots of details that would be difficult to scrape and sand. We use heat guns and scrapers as well. We use carbon

steel

scrapers that can be kept very sharp by draw filing. They remove material better and cause less damage when sharp. We then sand. We vacuum the work and then blow it off with air and then wipe it down with denatured alcohol. This is a much less toxic solvent than acetone or lacquer thinner. We keep it in dish soap style squeeze bottles for easy use. The alcohol will help dry the wood as well as remove surface contamination. When sanding teak the paper will load up very rapidly, just the nature of the beast. We blow the paper off with air and change paper regularly. Paper is cheap, labor is not.
We don't like to apply epoxy under a varnish finish. It makes repairs of scratches and dings much harder to accomplish. And when the time comes that you have to wood the project again it will be that much more difficult and toxic.
We like Interlux #96 gloss for exterior work and for interior work we mostly use Interlux #60 satin. We have used others but these are our preferences. We don't care for Epifanes at all, would just as soon smear the wood with peanut butter. Again just how we do it, some folks think that Epifanes is the gods' own nectar.
We also don't like the synthetics such as Awl Brite. There is no magic potion for beautiful maintenance free brightwork. It's pretty and you have to pay for it, period.
One thing we notice is that everybody sees varnish which is someplace it doesn't belong. A brush mark or minor sag or holiday is not near as noticeable and is easily rectifiable with the next coat. So a good tape job is important. Rebecca's book was very useful to me when brightwork became part of my

livelihood

some 20+ years ago. I recommend it. Again these are our/my thoughts and there are certainly many who get results with other methods. David

[LakeSuperior]

The epoxy was a big mistake!! Wait until you have to redo the finish. It is difficult to remove the epoxy layer and it will be necessary when parts of the epoxy fails with age and UV.

I think the reason why your varnish is soft is because you did not let it dry completely between coats. In the extreme it results in a mottled turtle-back wrinkling of the varnish especially if the coat of varnish is heavy.

I would let time try to heal what you have now.

[s/vfootloose]

I use Flagship and have had very good results with it. I don't use a sealer but thin the first couple of coats 40/50% with paint thinner. I wet back the first 2 coats by the time I get around once it's dry enough to put on the second coat. Lightly sand and start again using less thinner but enough that it flows well Every 6/9 months lightly sand and put on a couple of coats. It has been 4 years and still looks good. I live in Ft. Lauderdale so the sun is hard on varnish.

[TrevC]

This thread makes me really glad we have no exterior teak. Sounds like a lot of work!

[MJWEENZ]

Thanks for the advise all. For the record I have not applied any coatings yet, still in the prep stage. Good arguments for both pro and con on the epoxy.

The teak has been inside now for a week since I striped it, will see if it sands a bit bettey and is a tad dryer. If not will try the alchohol then the laquer thinner.

And if nothing works silver grey looks pretty good too!

[MJWEENZ]

PS,

Joli, I am at Brands in their facility on the south side of the river. Very nice!

[Lodesman]

Discussed earlier: http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ish-33669.html

[Joli]

If you can't sand the teak I have cabinet scrapers you can use. Let me know and I'll get them to you.

We would like to be in Brand's Marina also but the high tension wires crossing the river are only 87 feet high. Instead of a 5 minute walk to the boat we have a 3 hour drive to work on it.

Originally Posted by MJWEENZ

PS,

Joli, I am at Brands in their facility on the south side of the river. Very nice!