Boat deck replacement. (Wood) UK

[MikeSutherland1956]

I have advised to use sikaflex to seal the bevel...

 

[DownWest]

It would if you could get thick enough teak. You would need to lay it properly with a caulking bevel, caulk and then paye it. Alternatively you could lay a ply sub deck, sheath it with e-glass (using polyester or epoxy) and then stick a thinner teak deck down. Will be much cheaper.

Did this some years back. I was very lucky to find a thick teak plank, which milled down into enough 50x6mm strips. All epoxy, with graphite mixed in to give the 'payed seam' look. Lots of sanding, but looked very good.

 

[Keith 66]

Any ply sub deck will fail, it is the nature of the beast that they do, water gets in & rot starts. A builder i knew did a small run of steel boats with laid decks, he used 12mm birch ply as the subdeck with teak glued & screwed to the top.
His argument for using birch ply was that "It takes screws well"
They looked good but birch is not durable & the one boat i saw later was having serious trouble at 15 years old.
As for using polyester resin, it is cheap but does not really stick to wood that well, delamination is a real possibility.
If you want a deck to last glass cloth & epoxy is the way to go.
The price of teak is now so high that it isnt an option unless you are very rich, Or lucky!

 

[Wansworth]

Any ply sub deck will fail, it is the nature of the beast that they do, water gets in & rot starts. A builder i knew did a small run of steel boats with laid decks, he used 12mm birch ply as the subdeck with teak glued & screwed to the top.
His argument for using birch ply was that "It takes screws well"
They looked good but birch is not durable & the one boat i saw later was having serious trouble at 15 years old.
As for using polyester resin, it is cheap but does not really stick to wood that well, delamination is a real possibility.
If you want a deck to last glass cloth & epoxy is the way to go.
The price of teak is now so high that it isnt an option unless you are very rich, Or lucky!

What wood did Scottish fishing boat builders use on the decking ?

 

[Hacker]

Any ply sub deck will fail, it is the nature of the beast that they do, water gets in & rot starts. A builder i knew did a small run of steel boats with laid decks, he used 12mm birch ply as the subdeck with teak glued & screwed to the top.
His argument for using birch ply was that "It takes screws well"
They looked good but birch is not durable & the one boat i saw later was having serious trouble at 15 years old.
As for using polyester resin, it is cheap but does not really stick to wood that well, delamination is a real possibility.
If you want a deck to last glass cloth & epoxy is the way to go.
The price of teak is now so high that it isnt an option unless you are very rich, Or lucky!

It will if you don’t sheath it properly or screw through into it. Polyester does stick especially if you use accelerator painted onto the ply first. We managed to get a load of teak offcuts (from a local super yacht builder) which we milled down to 8mm thick. Stuck down with EBT and caulked with TDS.

 

[Bodach na mara]

What wood did Scottish fishing boat builders use on the decking ?

Usually a durable white wood such as larch or Douglas fir. And the decks often leaked after a few years. But the fishermen just put up with the odd leak!

Which reminds me that I wonder if the teak is original. Anyway watertight beats original any day.

 

[DoubleEnder]

I replaced a failed teak deck on a 34 sailing yacht. Or to be accurate, I paid a very skilled boatbuilder to do it. There was a lot of ‘discussion’ about methods and materials. I argued that a ply sub deck, with thin teak strips glued on top would be dry and add stiffness to the boat. The boatbuilder disagreed: he said that eventually some water WOULD get in to the ply. It is inevitable. When this happens the water will seep between the laminates and eventually migrate to a part of the boat that is invisible and complex and expensive to repair, such as the beam ends and shelf. You won’t notice until significant rot and damage has taken place.

His view was that we should either go with ply and canvas, or traditional thicker teak planks that are screwed in to the deck beams, with a proper caulking joint. We went with the latter. He said it was guaranteed leak proof for 2 years and would need recaulking at 10 years. After 11 years I noticed a drip.
This was done nearly twenty years ago now, and good teak is harder to get. I believe that plantation teak is not as dense or durable as the illegal material. But I owned that boat 17 years and had the decks recaulked once. I did two tiny spot repairs as well, an hour or two’s work.

The point is that if you notice a leak you will address it. If it is hidden between different layers you probably don’t notice, and even if you do it will be hard to trace.

Your call. Good ply is expensive. Good teak is pretty much unobtainable in thickness to build a deck. But I know that some very good yards are using other timbers. I’ve seen cedar, beautiful but a bit soft. I think for a husky boat oak could work, or why not really high quality Douglas fir. There was an article in Classic Boat a couple of years ago, I’ll see if I still have it.