Refinishing the teak on deak General Forum Forums

This is a major pain.. I had about a three page story written up and the browser blinked and I lost the whole thing so.. here it goes again.. maybe not as long  🙂

We started working on the decks on valkyr this past Thursday and the teak was the first thing. Valkyr's teak probably hasn't been touched in 10 years minimum. It is very rough and weathered, totally grey with no stain or  varnish or finish of any kind left on her anywhere. Over the years the surface of the teak has lost about an 1/8th of an inch due to weathering and prior sanding and maintenance. It's easy to see this due to the raised teak under the stern pulpit mounts where it has been protected from sanding and weathering. At this point enough of the teak is gone that you can no longer put bungs in about 50% or more of the holes where it is screwed down. The heads of the stainless screws are flush or close to flush with the surface of the teak now.

We got about 70% of the teak on valkyr sanded in a three and a half hour sanding marathon with me on a six inch random orbital sander and zsanic on a mouse palm sander. I was hitting the big areas aggressively with 60 grit and she was following behind and catching the curves and corners that I couldn't reach with 50 grit on the palm sander. The teak was in such bad shape that it took the aggressive sanding to get it done in any reasonable time frame. We were both very pleased with the results. The random orbital sander had to be managed carefully not to let it do to much but as long as you kept it moving it did fine. We decided not to go to 120 and then 220 grit for a super fine finish. The stain/oil that we are using gives a mostly flat finish anyway so it saved us a lot of work.

We researched a lot of different products and finally picked one called Tequa to use due to its simplicity in prep and usage as well as it's claimed durability and resistance to staining people and clothing that might rub up against the finished wood. All the teak in the following pictures were done with 3/4 of a quart of the Tequa for one medium thick coat that soaked in. We will be going back and doing second and even third coats till the wood quits soaking it up. After this it should be an annual one coat treatment after a prep of simply washing it down and letting it dry before application.

After sanding on Thursday afternoon we just fresh water rinsed the boat down to get rid of all the sanding dust and let it dry overnight. Nine AM in the morning we started staining. We did not tape anything off as the tequa isn't very runny and didn't drip bad at all. It's consistency is a kinda thick and muddy brown/grey color in the can. It goes on fairly clear and when it soaks in you can't see any of the color it has in it. It took the two of us about 2 hours of staining to get the first coat on the areas we had sanded the prior day.

so here is some pictures.. When we get the rest of the boat sanded and two or three coats of this stuff on I will post more pictures.

Here are a couple before and after sanding pictures

We have replaced the cowls on the dorade boxes with nicro solar vents which has helped immensely. We have two more to install back in the galley, chart table area.

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Here is a before of one of the hand rails. You can sea how coarse the wood is.

After sanding it looks much better. You can still see a few grey streaks where I didn't want to sand any more depth off the surface.

Here is after the first coat of Tequa. The Sampson posts were really badly weathered and it took a lot of creative sanding to get them smooth again. Looks pretty good.

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You can see the difference between the stained cap rail here and the grey weathered trim strip underneath it that hasn't been done yet.

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We are extremely pleased with the finished look of just one coat so far.

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once we get the pin rails and hatches and sky light done she will look really good. We also purchased a gallon of brightsides in white to repaint the cabin sides and all non-skid deck areas. That will be happening soon.

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huge clutter of lines and such here but still the newly stained wood just pops!

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Sailor the cat checking out the new look. He wasn't to happy about all the power tool use but now is liking his new looking wood. The sail covers are off the boat for week or so to get re-stitched. Actually Zsanic is in the next room right this second stitching up the staysail cover.

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