All this Wood! How do you maintain interior wood?

[oldragbaggers]

Originally Posted by wolfesmy

If it's not varnished. DON'T VARNISH INTERIOR TEAK. I've seen too many beautiful interiors ruined with varnish. I've even seen, if you can believe it, an entire interior done in repeat coats of Cetol. What a mess. Cetol is for exterior teak.

Use a good furniture polish with Tung and Teak Oil. There's a product called Liquid Gold that does an awesome job cleaning and rejuvenating dry teak. My wife used an entire bottle on a neglected C&C 34 and the teak looks awesome. This teak was thirsty. It takes a wipe on and hand buff annually but stays beautiful and natural.
This year couldn't find Liquid Gold so we tried Pledge Orange oil. Wow! even better than LG. creates a nice hard shine just by wiping on and lightly hand rubbing, cleans as it goes and the boat smells awesome like Oranges while you work.

Keep the teak unvarnished and replenish its natural finish.

BTW What a beautiful interior!!

So happy that you have found a way of maintaining your wood that you are pleased with. But really......you need to emphasize that no one should ever varnish a boat interior? I've seen many beautifully varnished boat interiors, and some people actually prefer them.

This happens on this forum so often that it really takes a lot of the fun out of sharing on many of these threads. We all have different ideas about beauty and functionality and part of the fun is sharing all these ideas so that we all get a lot of vantage points (and hopefully a lot of options). But then there always has to be someone to jump in and, instead of just saying, "I have found that x, y, and z works really well and makes a good finish" (or whatever the subject is) has to take it to the level of "and the guys that do something else are really stupid because you should never do that and it'll look like crap and ruin your boat." So I guess all us guys who choose to have varnished interiors (and spend a significant amount of time and care in making them as beautiful as possible), and "oh ain't I the idiot, I even posted photos of mine" should all feel pretty ignorant now for "ruining our boat."

Why not just offer your suggestions as to products that work, how they work and why they work, and let the OP decide what appeals to him.

A little more sharing and a little less judging would make this forum a whole lot nicer place to be.

[Island_Moose]

11 coats of hard furniture wax, with a maintenance coat every year. Apply with a soft scotchbrite pad and a lot of rags.




A Kiwi Nonsuch 30 Ultra: Interior Woodwork - Refinish

[oldragbaggers]

Originally Posted by Island_Moose

11 coats of hard furniture wax, with a maintenance coat every year. Apply with a soft scotchbrite pad and a lot of rags.




A Kiwi Nonsuch 30 Ultra: Interior Woodwork - Refinish

Loved looking at your pictures and your interior is absolutely gorgeous. I think I like this finish every bit as much as varnish and as it is probably much less work, I might give this a try this time since I have much more wood to deal with in this boat than I have ever had before.

[JerseyJoe]

Super finish Island Moose! Now how did we come upon the number of 11 for coats of wax?

[Scout 30]

In a related note I've been using the oil based Australian Timber Oil on the exterior & it's holding up amazingly well. I've settled on the Mahogany Flame color because it lasts much longer than the lighter colors. This stuff goes on in one coat, never peels & in Florida I'm getting about 2 years before I need to slap on another coat. I've been using teak oil on the interior but I think I'll switch to Australian Timber Oil in a lighter color this year.

[Island_Moose]

Originally Posted by JerseyJoe

Super finish Island Moose! Now how did we come upon the number of 11 for coats of wax?

With each successive coat over about 4 months, the shine got better and better. After the 11th coat I ran out of wax and figured it was shiny enough. The photos were taken at the 4th coat, which was probably shiny enough. They are very very thin coats. If you slap it on I think you would struggle to polish it, the wax is like candle wax, not car wax.

I used Briwax, which has two formulations...with toluene and without...get the "without", which I didn't discover until it was too late. Toluene fumes cause terrible headaches.

I know many people say that wax has no place on a boat, but I assume they are referring to exterior surfaces...if seawater is running down the face of your cabinetry, you have bigger problems than dull interior woodwork.

[CS Cruiser]

Watco oils or Wymans lemon oil work great, easily applied and yearly maintenance will hold,up,extremely well.

[Greggegner]

We use orange oil 2-3 times a year. We like the smell and it might help keep spiders out. With our cowls open all the time and the bumper crop we fight to control outside we see very few inside.


Greg S/V Sweet Dreams
Pearson P385 out of Racine Wisconsin

[Jim Cate]

FWIW:

The interior of our boat is mostly New Guinea Rosewood, not teak, but I suspect there isn't that much difference in how to deal with it. The builder of our boat sprayed varnish on all of it when he built her 24 years ago. With the exception of the high wear areas around the galley and the interior of the companionway, it is still in very good nick. A wipe down every now and then with a damp cloth and it looks great. Did you notice the time scale? 24 years...

We've touched up the fiddles around the galley sink and the galley bench twice in our 11 years ownership (full time live aboard/cruising).

More work to start, then a life of ease of maintenance. You choose...

Jim

[Scout 30]

The waxed finish is beautiful but you better be sure that's what you want because nothing else will ever want to stick to that wood. You can go over an oiled finish with just about anything. IMHO there's nothing prettier than a varnished interior with a deep gloss & the great thing about varnishing the interior is that the sun won't eat it up. Once it's done it's done but it is a huge job to do it right.

[wolfesmy]

Sorry Becky
You are absolutely right. And there are a lot of beautifully finished boat interiors and owners that take great care of them. I shouldn't have generalized.
I'm just a passionate natural teak guy.

Cheers

[rwidman]

The care for raw or finished (varnish, polyurethane, lacquer, etc.) wood is entirely different so be sure you know what you're starting with. My interior wood (trim) is finished and needs some touching up but I have to find out what the finish is now before I begin.

You can see from the responses here that there are many differing opinions on the best product.

[oldragbaggers]

Originally Posted by wolfesmy

Sorry Becky
You are absolutely right. And there are a lot of beautifully finished boat interiors and owners that take great care of them. I shouldn't have generalized.
I'm just a passionate natural teak guy.

Cheers

Totally understood. I think we are all passionate when it comes to our boats. It's almost humorous sometimes (except that we're so deadly serious about it). You could probably get away easier with telling someone they have an ugly kid than you can telling them they have an ugly boat!!

[Capecoder]

I used Murphy's soap and liquid Gold and it made huge improvement. I thought was was going to have to refinish "acres" of teak. But now it's only few small very high wear spots (stairs) that really need some sandpaper and new finish.
question. Now will the new finish stick to were I applied the Liquid Gold to bare wood?

[oldragbaggers]

Originally Posted by Scout 30

The waxed finish is beautiful but you better be sure that's what you want because nothing else will ever want to stick to that wood. You can go over an oiled finish with just about anything. IMHO there's nothing prettier than a varnished interior with a deep gloss & the great thing about varnishing the interior is that the sun won't eat it up. Once it's done it's done but it is a huge job to do it right.

So true. I was actually reading about and considering the Briwax after seeing Island Moose's gorgeous interior but after thinking about it for awhile and considering that if I didn't like it as much as my varnished interior I would not be able to varnish it later I decided I better just stick with what I know I love. I think I will have to do my boat in stages because there is just too much of it for me to tackle in one fell swoop so I will likely start by just cleaning and oiling the whole thing with something like Liquid Gold just to put the life back into it in the meantime.