Cleaning teak

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Billyo

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After reading numerous threads here on teak renovation I went for the Wessex two part cleaner followed by a couple of coats of Semco.

After about a day of scrabbling around on my hands and knees the results are quite frankly amazing! Highly recommend anyone dilemmaering on a solution to ropey teak to go for it.
 
Just be a little wary as that acid is quite powerful...too much use and you might find that your caulking turns to toffee.
Safer but a less dramatic clean is Owaltrol.
 
gjgm said:
Just be a little wary as that acid is quite powerful...too much use and you might find that your caulking turns to toffee.
Safer but a less dramatic clean is Owaltrol.
Click to expand...

That's good to know! So far I've only done the toe and hand rails. Will hopefully be doing the cockpit seats at the weekend but will be a little circumspect with the cleaners.
 
Agree about the good results. I noticed that the red cleaner stuff contained caustic soda; the effect was to loosen the top layer of fibres so won't use it too often.
 
Billyo said:
After reading numerous threads here on teak renovation I went for the Wessex two part cleaner followed by a couple of coats of Semco.

After about a day of scrabbling around on my hands and knees the results are quite frankly amazing! Highly recommend anyone dilemmaering on a solution to ropey teak to go for it.
Click to expand...

Some years back, sainsbury's dishwasher powder worked best.
 
+1 for Wessex's two-part Teak Cleaner.

I bought a couple of 1 litre bottles with the intention of trying them out on a badly weathered teak garden bench before I took them anywhere near my wafer thin but also badly weathered teak decks. The results on the garden bench are absolutely astonishing! I went for maximum recommended concentration for the Cleaner but a much lower concentration for the Restorer. Even at the high concentrations of cleaner (5:1 water:cleaner) applied by hand (along the grain NOT across it) with a washing up sponge, I have noticed no softening of the upper fibres. But DO follow the instructions and do not be tempted to omit the restorer as this chemically neutralises the cleaner.

The amount of black 'gunge' that the cleaner liberated is something to behold and I used a 'dirty' bucket of water only so I could rinse out the sponge from time to time to save contaminating the remainder of the diluted cleaning solution. A little goes along way so don't mix any more than about 100 ml of either concentrate at any one time.

At the risk of thread drift, I also purchased some eye-wateringly expensive Semco Teak Sealer. this went on the garden bench also but the 'natural' colour is too yellow for my taste and the smell (after a week outside) is unpleasant. So the Semco won't be going anywhere near the boat for the time being.
 
Does anyone have any experience of the caulking 'turning to toffee' with the Wessex 2 part cleaner? I have ordered some and was planning to apply it next week.
 
Ian_Rob said:
Does anyone have any experience of the caulking 'turning to toffee' with the Wessex 2 part cleaner? I have ordered some and was planning to apply it next week.
Click to expand...

Very good question. My garden bench test didn't check out this aspect!

The Wessex Chemicals website states the following: "Will not soften boat deck seams" so I took that to cover caulking - although I acknowledge there are many different types of caulking.

There's not a great deal of caulk left in places on my decks so I think I will start with a low concentration of cleaner (say 10:1) and see what happens on one plank. One of the advantages of applying the solution with a sponge is a fair amount of precision if one uses an index finger to apply the pressure and agitate along the grain rather than using a brush. The good thing is that fresh water can be applied at any stage so one can wash off the offending solution before prolonged contact.
 
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