decks- linseed oil and white spirit? Any good?

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sailorsmum

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/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif Hello, I have been told that Linseed Oil + white spirit does a far superior job than teak oil on a cleaned teak deck. Would like to try it this year. Anyone know the correct mix? Or, is it better? Thanks. <span style="color:blue"> </span>
 
dont use anything on your teak decks. IMHO especially not oil or white spirit or linseed oil. Folly.
Just wash then regular with sea water, dont scrub them either.
 
I would third that.....

You don't say where you are, but if you are in the UK and you get a nice green mould on it through the winter, just treat it by spraying down ONCE a year with Moss and Mould Cleaner, available in any garden centre for patios etc.

I now have what I would call a totally maintenance free deck. Apart from the once a year application of mould cleaner, I have never scrubbed or even sponged the decks. All traces of the green slime/mould goes after about a week and a half of dryish weather. Then just swish down with salt water.

Look round the marina and watch all those guys with GRP deck scrubbing them... This is something you will never have to do again!

AND - the deck will last a long time, as you are not scrubbing out the grain each time!
 
Hello and thank you all for your advice. I hate the sticky teak oil, that is why I wondered about this alternative. I am in South of France near Nice. Don't have the green decks, just grey-black. Have done the rails, trims, gangplank/passerelle etc with a plastic coating (after sanding/scrubbing down) which I am pleased with. Says it lasts 5 years .......! Here they use a lot teak cleaner/brightener/finish type products which cost a packet and need doing very 2 months. So THANKS AGAIN FOLKS, i WILL GET MY SCRUBBING BRUSH OUT, then when clean again, a quick once over every week. Happy sailing. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif
 
Sorry I've posted this before but it might be of interest. Hallberg Rassy say this is their manual about looking after teak decks

"Wash regularly, if needed, once in a while with oxalic acid or sodium hypochlorite. Use a rag on a brush or sponge to spare the soft part of the wood fibres, to minimise the wear.

You can also use fine-grained sandpaper. This will, if used lightly, only take off the tops. The brown areas that appear will soon fade, bleached by the sun. The amount of wood removed by light hand sanding is so small that it hardly matters.

The worst thing that can happen to a teak deck is cleaning it with a high pressure water jet. Every marina or yacht yard has such an equipment and there are definite reasons to strongly advise against the use of this on your teak deck. It’s only a matter of seconds before deep grooves are made, or even splitting the teak.

At every boat show we meet people claiming that their high pressure cleaner with the right setting will clean a teak deck without damaging the wood. Do not believe them"
 
Sorry I meant to add this part of HR's advice in my message above....

"The teak deck is a part of your boats character. After a few weeks the teak will turn greyish, and a smooth silvery grey deck is probably what most people like to see. The reality is often something quite different.

You have probably already seen dark, dirty, sometimes mildewy teak decks. Mildew is something that is more frequent today than some decades ago. You will find it not only on teak decks. It can be found on concrete, piers, painted surfaces and so on. The presence might differ very locally, some areas suffer a lot from mildew, and others are not hit at all. In the long run the best way to treat the teak deck against mildew is to use Boracol. Boracol is a liquid that is uncoloured and thin like water. It is sold in normal chemist shops and hardware dealers. It is marketed as a treatment against mildew for garden furniture.

Use a normal paintbrush and paint the deck with Boracol. Never use a normal brush on the teak! Do the work on a dry dray. If it rains too much Boracol will be washed away. It does not matter if it is drizzling the next day but if it rains the complete day or over splashing waves washes over the deck, the Boracol will make no effect. That would flush the Boracol way too early. If it does not rain, spray the deck a little with water. This little amount of water only helps the Boracol to penetrate into the teak.

After three to seven days you wash the deck with a sponge and cleaner, for example green soap. Please
do not be afraid if you do not see any positive result immediately. On the contrary, the deck looks worse than it did before the treatment. After about ten days things will start to happen. The mildew has disappeared and the deck is clean. The mildew will not recur for some time. Do not be afraid to repeat the treatment now and then.
 
Here we go, the annual outing for tcms patented teak looking after manual....


TCM Teak thread reproduced. All credit to original git.

You'll see new looking decks at (some) shows that are actually selling secondhand boats. There are even one or two forumites boats with secondhand but sparkling new decks. Here's how. My own background is having swankyish boats in the south of france, having built annd maintained 3 teak patios outside houses one of them 200 square metres, employed know all and notso know all cleaners and skippers, spent hundreds on all sorts of jetwashers, brushes, gizmos, and chemicals.

1. First decide if you want you teak to look like teak - or teak covered with something else. I can tell if it's oiled, or if it's got semco onnit, and so can everyone else. It looks a bit yellowish, uniform and non-natural, and it's clear that you trying to short-circuit the actual cleaning. Ultimately, it's a bodge, cos you either can';t or can't be bothered with cleaning. There's also fake teak, which if you talk to sealine they can tell you is actually twice the price of real teak. But we humans are very good at identifying tactile materials even from a good distance away. Teak should look like teak, imho.

2. First off, the chemicals. You need two-part cleaner which can be obtained from wessex chemicals. You get this in 5-litre plasrtic containers, about 20 quid per container. Mark the containers "part 1" and "Part22 very clear cos the coloured dye can go off after year and yer can't tell which is which.

3. Now , the kit: NO BRUSHES, NO JETWASHERS. You need the mildest possible way of swooshing around the boat, and on new teak this means a sponge. But a sponge on a stick, so a vileda floor mop thing that squeezes out is excellent. For outside teak tho, esp teak which is a bit nackered, the floor mop is not quite spongified enough. The Surehold range (pretty sure that's the right name?) sure summink anyway haven't got it in from of me - you get a long stick and put attachements onnit , red handle - is the one to get, and get the flat attachment to which you can stick on a pad that looks like a panscrub. You want the very mildest one, white one that is soft enuf to wash your face with - only just not a sponge, not as severe as a loofah. Plonk this on the flat face of the attachment.

Key thing is that you need this to take a short amoujnt of time - so hands and knees is a bit rubbish cos you will never do it more than once - an effective AND quick clean is what we want.

3. Cleaning even a colossal floor takes minutes, not hours. get everything out of the area, tables chairs etc so no water goes on anything cept the teak. Screw-down tables need to be out as well. Hoover dusty inside areas if neccesary, then wet the area with hose NOT blasting, just dribble about.

4. Now use a mild dilution of part 1 in a bucket and bosh it on the teak. 5 to one is the most severe you shd use ever on mossy grreenish teak, but try 10 to 1 to start if it's just greyish. The teak will go uniformly dark, the colour of mahogany. Agitate the stuff over the teak, across the grain. That floor mop to sloosh it around, always acros the grain, or the soft spongy pad. As it goes dark, there's a tendency to not bother rubbing everywhere, but you do need to "apply" it to the wood with the sponge/mop thing, not just rinse over.

5. Pretty much as soon as the stuff is is on, it's done the business. So once it is all uniformly wet and dark, rinse the area, and tons of brown crap will come off. You need it all off. I use a rubber window wiping blade on a stick to swoosh it all out. You can use a bit of rag to get the edge bits up against a wal where to mop didn't agitate - you get toknow after doin g it the first few times. Again, don't blast with water, low pressure and lots of it.

6. Now the part two, the red stuff. Again , mild solution. 10 to one on wet teak after part 1. This isworrying to put on cos it bleaches back the colour, and the bucket seems to make a mark. Argh! Don't worry - it will all come off, as the bleachiness goes all over. Provided you stay at a mild dilution, you can't put "too much" on - it retuirns to it';s natural colour, so it won't go white or anything like that. On big patios or on the pontoon (yep, you have to clean the pontoon too soon, see below) i use a garden watering can and a rose to sploosh it on. The teak is clean now, and just needs this part two (which is dilute oxalic acid) to be rinsed off. If you missed an area with p1, it'll be silvery grey after p2, so yerd have to start again.
Again, rinse and wipe with a blade to speed up the drying process, and get the dirt off without tons and tons of water.
Walking on the teak whilst it's drying meanns you lose the "utterly fab clean new-boat" feeling, but the footmarks do evaporate so it's ok, ish. The rubber blade v significantly reduces drying time. The teak looks brand new when it dries. Is it clean tho? Get a white tissue and wet it, wipe over tyhe teak, and the tissue will remain clean. It's clean enough to eat food from.

7. Soon the teak will get filthy again. Why's that? Well it's cos of the rain, or the air or (mostly) cos you did it. In the south of france, big boats are "no shoes" - you step aboard in bare feet, not deck shoes, not socks, but Bare Feet, even if you charter the boat and pay a zillion pounds a week. All those swanky boats , look at the pics v closely and none are wearing shoes. Ok, on some they ARE wearing shoes, but they are either deck pumps (that always stay on the clean deck) or boneheads.

8. To keep the deck clean, i'm afraid that you need to try a bit harder than you are doing. You have a deck that is utterly clean and visibly so, like white carpet. But the pontoon is filthy. It's like having muddy garden path and muddy driveway, and white carpet indoors. You need to instigate a regime to limit the dirt arriving on board, or do more cleaning, and more cleaning means more wearing away the teak dunnit, so you have to be nice but then again, look after thhe boat, difficult i know, but anyway.
Clean the pontoon where you step aboard for a start, using 2-part teak cleaner again, and this time a stiff brush cos it will be filthy. If the quayside of you normal berth is concrete, clean and paint it with garage floor paint. put a mat down on the quayside for changing shoes. The mat will fly away in high wind so make sure you have spare mats and take it away in a gale. I lose about one mat per year, mebbe two. If you can't be shoes-off on board the boat cos in the uk it's cold, have one pair of shoes for schlepping over to the car park etc. and dedicated shoes on board that are only for on board, never ashore.

9. Knackered ridgy teak. Teak is inherently quite weak, really. To keep it from disintgrating, you need to never clean it and never wash it, and never step on and keep it covered. UNfortuntately, this aint possible on a boat. But a winter cover (over the whiole boat or at least over the teak) makes it last longer. If you have bare teak indoors perhaps in a wheelhouse, and also outdoors on the deck, you'll see how the indoor stuff stay flat and not-ridgy for much longer. The rain does this - its a moderate jetwash that happens lots of times per year. So, if you had a cover, or individual covers for bitos of the deck, your teak won't go ridgy anywhere near as quickly. I haven't got this, cos it's a bit anal and i can't be bothered. If you have a professional skipper, he could get it done, but there will be protests: this is cos it's work. But the name of the game is to have the teak under cover , accessible with air to stop it going mouldy a bit, but never with rain landing on it. Le Grand Blue is abramoviches ugly ship with loads of boats incl a big 70 foot powerboat - now replaced with a sunseekker predator, but the first powerboat they had on there (Sirius) had individual covers for the teak held on with poppers - and the teak is lovely, even after a several years.

10. Sanding the teak. Yeah, well, you need a machine to do this, and make it flat. Easy to decsribe, hard to do and makes a right mess. Once the teak is flat, you can make it smooth with finer and finer sanding, tho it will be slippery if you go on too long. It will need sanding eventually.

11 Finally about the semco and other protective coverings: at the cost of it looking like real natural teak, these stop dirt from entering the grain. So, it's sort-of protecting the teak for the next owner of the boat. I spose you could use the semco over winter, that would be okay. Would a top-class superyacht or classic racer use semco. No they blimmin well wouldn't, they'd be chucked out of st tropez and the skipper doomed to everlasting ridicule, the lazy git. Teak means teak.





And oh yes, it works.
 
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/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif Hello, I have been told that Linseed Oil + white spirit does a far superior job than teak oil on a cleaned teak deck. Would like to try it this year. Anyone know the correct mix? Or, is it better? Thanks. <span style="color:blue"> </span>

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Yes you can use Linseed oil etc. - but you will regret it immediately sun gets anywhere near it. It will get sticky, will transfer to soles of shoes, feet, clothes etc.

I don't like greyed / faded teak - think it looks awful, but it's a difficult wood to keep as new and also non-slip. Personally I would use a water based stain lightly wiped over NOT brushed.
 
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Look round the marina and watch all those guys with GRP deck scrubbing them... This is something you will never have to do again!

[/ QUOTE ]How do you get the seagull crap off? That's why our deck gets scrubbed.

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It seems to get washed off, and I have never had to do anything about them. This year they are slightly worse. When I throw a bucket of sea water over the decks I just rub the offending bit with my hand.
 
If the caulking is Sikaflex then solvents, probably including white spirit, will make the surface of it brittle and eventually crack.
 
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