Faking Teak and Holly cabin soles

[stevd]

Hi all,

I am about to order some marine ply to redo my cabin sole boards. My intention is to stain the ply to a similar colour as teak and then route strips with a 4mm bit and fill with something to get the holly effect. I am still at a loss as to what to use to fill the grove with. I was thinking maybe some sort of coloured caulking but I am wondering if varnish will bond to it?

Any ideas on what to use?

Many thanks

 

[Tranona]

You can either use caulking which you can get in cream or white or you can buy machined strips of either ramin or pine in B&Q which you can glue in as splines. Coat your panels with floor varnish - I use Ronseal to give a good durable and non slip finish.

 

[prv]

I too would be dubious about varnish staying stuck to any kind of gunned-in goop. I think you'd need to actually inlay something solid if trying to simulate it that way.

Have you considered the faux teak-and-holly laminate stuff? I recovered part of our sole using it last winter and it was quite easy. Cut the laminate roughly to shape, impact adhesive from Screwfix, then run round the edge with a straight bearing bit in a router.

Pete

 

[rogerthebodger]

Hi all,

I am about to order some marine ply to redo my cabin sole boards. My intention is to stain the ply to a similar colour as teak and then route strips with a 4mm bit and fill with something to get the holly effect. I am still at a loss as to what to use to fill the grove with. I was thinking maybe some sort of coloured caulking but I am wondering if varnish will bond to it?

Any ideas on what to use?

Many thanks

I tryed that some time ago and found that using white sikaflex in a grove proved very difficult to get the sikaflex smooth enough with a nice neat edge.

I did something similar with outside hatched by gluing strips of Iroko with 5mm gaps then corked with black sikaflex but used a belt sander to clean the wood and corking smooth and to the same level.

Varnish was OK on both.

My inside floor I did with strips of 45mm Iroko and 5mm jacaranda then belt sanded smooth.

 

[GrahamM376]

Hi all, I am about to order some marine ply to redo my cabin sole boards. My intention is to stain the ply to a similar colour as teak and then route strips with a 4mm bit and fill with something to get the holly effect. I am still at a loss as to what to use to fill the grove with. I was thinking maybe some sort of coloured caulking but I am wondering if varnish will bond to it? Any ideas on what to use? Many thanks

Couple of things come to mind. Maybe you've sourced some but I haven't managed to find any good marine ply in N Wales, it's mostly the usual cr*p stuff with lots of voids but waterproof glue. Howells and Robbins OTOH are very expensive for the good stuff. Plenty of light coloured wood around if you want to machine your own strips but, as Tranona says, it's available off the shelf. I would steer well clear of any mastic for below decks use.

Although I have all the necessary tools, I would still do what I did before, buy teak and holly striped ply from Howells.

 

[superheat6k]

A Holly & Teak effect laminate is very effective and tough as old boots once properly bonded.

Hawke House sell it by the sheet. I used West System epoxy to bond it two boats ago. It looked great.

 

[salar]

I used the laminate fake teak from Robbins Timber (who supply many others anyway) 6mm thick glued on with Sikaflex. Very hard wearing, waterproof, non slip, looks great. What's not to like.

 

[stevd]

Thanks for the advice. I thought about the robbins route but I would need just over one sheet annoyingly. So this would work out to be around £220 just for the laminate.

Ill have a go with using inlays from B&Q if it looks rubbish then I'll order the laminate.

As for the quality of grain on the marine ply in North Wales, I have no idea what it will look like as they are ordering it in for me. Hope it will be OK though.

Thanks again for the useful ideas and suggestions