Refinish Teak Grating

[Spirit28]

Time to replace the ageing head with an electric one.

The head sits on a raised GRP internal furniture moulding topped off with a bit of teak & holly plywood for looks. The floor in the rest of the head area has a teak grating sitting on top of a shower drain.

All the wood bits are in need a bit of cleaning up and refinishing. The teak grate is a nicely put together bit of woodwork that is finished with originally with some 2 pack polly and then overcoated at some stage (by PO) with a single pack varnish. In each of the 128 3/4 x 3/4" square holes the single pack stuff is peeling as I guess it was not prepared properly when the single pack stuff was put on and is an unsightly mess.

I found my father in-laws high pressure wash machine at the back of the shed an managed to remove most of the peeling stuff - anyone got any tips/experiences for an easy way to prepare the inside of the square holes for refinishing??

I thought about taking it apart, but it is glued & screwed and don't want to destroy it..

I reckon I'm up for many hours of manual toil... Have to pull up a chair and a beer or two...

Let me see - say 2 min per hole by 128 holes = h'mm 4 hours!!

[cabo_sailor]

I think that I would soak it in a shallow tub/basin with a stripper, in the US I would use CitriStrip. I don't know what it would be called down under. Then use a stiff brush to clean it out. If I had to I would make a basin using lumber and plastic sheeting.

Still going to be a tedious and messy job. Good thing it doesn't have to be done often.

[AnchorageGuy]

We had teak grates in the shower on our sailboat and now in both heads of the new trawler. We don't coat the inside of the holes and it looks fine and does not present a problem. We`actually roll and tip the varnish, or in our case hardwood floor finish and try not to let it run into the holes.

[Sandero]

I have an eggrate for the shower but never bothered to apply any finish. Every once in a while I feed a some small stuff to them and toss them off the stern to soak in the sea and then bush them with a bit of oxalic acid 2 part type teak cleaner. They come out look damn good. Every 5 years I sand them with an orbital sander. The cubic "voids" are hard to clean up. A test tube brush can be used but this takes a long time.

[JusDreaming]

Diane did our's once, and had good luck with a large coarse finger nail file. It was about 3/4 inch wide so it worked pretty good. But since she did it, she has decided that she now likes the weathered look

[James S]

A heat gun to loosen the old finish and scrape with a blade like you have in a box cutter.
But take care the heat could damage the glue.

Those things look good but can get pretty nasty. When I renovated the heads, I deleted them and any other wood finishes on our near the floor.