Restoring the colour of teak

[doug748]

This suggestion is old hat now, but International Woodskin is worth a try for about 15 quid a tin.

It is very easy to freshen up, dries quickly, looks good, sticks to teak and lasts very well. However it does not have the gloss of a true varnish and I find the colour a bit muddy. What gloss it does have is soon subdued.

These water based finishes were developed from products used to coat wooden structures on trendy new buildings. You may still find stocks of Cetol Novatech , Novatop etc in builder's merchants, which are similar and available in a range of hues.

I suggest you try in on the handrails and maybe the toerail. Later you might do around the ports and combings, if only because it will shed water more quickly. The contrast would produce an excellent effect and it would be easy to put back if you did not get on with it.

On my plastic boat the, rather weedy, toerail was suffering at the bow, where the full benefit of the weather is felt. These finishes have certainly helped preserve things.

 

[tcm]

I'm certain this has been discussed but I have searched this forum and come up empty handed. My gaff cutter (www.justflamingo.com) has lots of lovely teak just waiting to be restored. On really worn areas almost all of the old varnish has flaked off and the exposed wood has faded grey like a teak deck. Obviously sanding will get back to the lovely honey coloured teak lurking beneath, however I'm wondering whether there is a way of restoring the colour without sanding it. Not that I'm afraid of a bit of hard graft you understand, and who needs finger prints anyway, but I'm conscious that repeated sanding will start to blur the shape and definition of moldings like the rubbing strake or coach roof lip. I have used a wood restorer before but with poor results, any advice gratefully received. View attachment 47247
Jonathan

Hokay, there's two issues - the raw teak going grey, and the varnished teak which is flaking off and the exposed wood then going grey.

Teak is semi-hard and oily wood, and it oxidises. Loads of things oxidise, metal things going rusty... and organic things too, like say peeled apples - but just under the surface it's nice and apple-coloured.

Teak also oxidises, so if you have teak partly under a canopy and partly out in the open, the exposed areas go grey faster whereas the protected areas not so bad. That teak will go grey even miles from a motorway or diesel fumes and even if you never walk on it - cos you didn't walk in the corners or up the side in your pic did you?

To get back to that honey-coloured teak, you can use increasingly harsh methods, all the way from saltwater (not much cop) to a solution of washing up powder (quite good) to oxalic acid (better, not the best) to two-part teak restoring chemicals, and (as you suggested) actually getting the sander on the thing.

For the varnished stuff, just use a heat gun to remove the varnish, until you have bare wood. OR you can sand the thing, but that's harsher. You need quite harsh-sounding sanding grit for teak deck - 80 grit is a bit pathetic - 40-grit is what the pro's use unless the skipper is green and thinks the teak will end up the same roughness as the sandpaper which it won't. But of course feel free to have a go with 80-grit whioch hardly makes any headway, and then go and get some 60-grit, and then eventually 40.

Of course, for those nice teak items which you might touch or varnish or see up close, you gotta use MUCH gentler than 80-grit, and you can have great fun using super-fine grits like 400 or 600 before wiping the teak with a damp cloth to "turn" the grain, and then sanding it again else the first coat of varnish will ugh make it rough, and in any case you have to sand the varnish two days later when it's gone hard, and put on another coat and two days later more sanding back. Do the varnish indoors, or if impossible do it in the morning of a sunny day so it doesn't "bloom" which is because someone did the varnish last thing and then the evening dew condensed on it, dang. Not to worry, more sanding back anyway, still only eight more coats before it starts to look rather fabulous.

Anyways, now for the raw teak deck. I hope i don't need to say that hard-bristled brush is a no-no on teak - it digs out the softer parts of the wood. But if your teak is "ridgy" then either you need to use that hard brush or sand the stuff. And anyone with a jet wash on teak needs to have their boat forcibly taken away from them.

Varnishing protects the teak, but it's not apply-and forget, as you are proving. You'll see superyachts apply varnish several times a year to their capping rail around the boat. You need about ten layers of varnish o make it look fab, and another couple of layers each year.

For *some* teak parts, a more durable finish is offered by products like Coeleans, but it tends to look more gloopy than varnish ... although for things like masts which you can't reach easily, that might be the best solution.

Oh yes, the two-part stuff for the deck ... brands include Wessex and Florida, same stuff... and is for teak that is quite acceptable not too ridgy or anything BUT just silver-grey (and assuming you don't like silver-grey, which many don't mind...) . Apply part1 diluted as directed, try a small area etc, and the teak should go all dark-coffee coloured. Quite worrying really, ahem. Arg it's gone almost black! But don't worry, please. While it is on the deck, scrub all over esp at the worst bits with a flat scouring pad, and rinse off well before it dries. This chemical and the scourer is removing the grey oxide layer, so loads of cack is thrown up and yep, you are removing wood BUT not much, and you need a lot of hose-piping, obvious NOT jet-powered. The teak goes very slippery with this P1 stuff on the deck so watch your step.

Part 2 is actually oxalic acid. For large areas you can make up the stuff in a watering can and bosh it on and rinse off within minutes but NOT on metal items ... the teak will turn honey coloured IF you cleaned off all the cack with Part 1. If you just sort-of "applied" the part one and didn't give it some stick rubbing it well, it'll be hm not bad. But if you do it pretty carefully, getting rid of all those grey bits that you can easily see on the p1 is on the deck ...you can return the teak to absolutely brand spanking new, as some guys selling boats at the boat show prove every year - the boat is alll ooh lovely new! even though you're pretty sure you saw the very same unit in a nearby marina 6 months earlier looking a bit sad, albeit new and unsold. The two-part teak cleaner is all they need to make it look brand new and "just arrived" looking. But no brushing that new (or recently sanded) teak ok? Just those flat scouring pads. Oh, and make sure you do right in the CORNERS which is where we all have a look to check - yep, it just muct be a new boat. Oh, well, it's a new deck anyway. No, it isn't hah!

To maintain the appearance of this fabulous raw teak, park the boat indoors and hide it from sunlight completely, and never take it out. Hum, impossible. Ok, consider some canvas covers for teak deck. Yeah, also a total pain. In that case, enjoy the thing while it's new-looking. A quick swoosh with that dishwashing powder is pretty good after a few weeks. It'll be silver-grey again in a year, though, or much less than a year if in the med where the sun wil get it, again. So what's the point? Well, the point is that YOU have that amazing looking boat that we're all drooling over gosh wow, and everyone else's is manky. No, they can't come on board, and best if people don't walk on on it with their manky shoes off the dock.

If you get the two-part teak thing all lovely, you may be tempted to do the pontoon too! That's often made of mahogany and it looks yeehah fabulous if you use two-part teak cleaner on the bits around you boat. Otherwsie you'd be trampling the cack on board, see? So obviously that needs cleaning too, sorry. If the pontton is concrete like in the Med, you can use Hydrochloric acid quite freely on the stuff and that makes the concrete pontoon all lovely clean to match the fabulous new-looking teak deck. I did this in Antibes in about 2002, and then i even painted my bit of the concrete pontoon with garage paint which caused a great deal of interest... and which is such a good idea that now the concrete edge of whole of Mol Sud (and elsewhere) is now also painted with the nice sealing garage floor paint

Eventually, though you'll either go mad, or get used to silver-grey teak, or get a more plasticky boat, and I did at least two of these three options

 

[skyflyer]

I have discovered that these two part teak cleaners are actually caustic soda as part 1 (sodium hydroxide) which is why it is so sloppy, and as tdc says, part two is either oxalic acid or more usually phosphoric acid (30%) which is a little bit more effective. Both those chemicals can be bought over the counter for a fraction of the price of the branded products. Wearing gloves and eye protection is a must of course!

An excellent book on wood treatment and varnishing, written by someone who does it for a living, is:-

The Brightwork Companion: Tried-and-True Methods and Strongly Held Opinions in Thirteen and One-Half Chapters1 Feb 2004
by Rebecca Wittman

or her longer and quite readable version:-

Brightwork: Art of Finishing Wood
by Rebecca Wittman

 

[JonnieFlamingo]

Hi SAMYL, good point. I was so carried away with the loveliness of Aeolus and the simplicity of leaving it natural that I didn't think about what wood it is. That said I had a look last weekend and I'm not sure whether it is Mahogany or Teak or a mixture... the coach roof sides have that slightly reddish tinge I would expect from Mahogany but in the cockpit the T&G planks look much more Teak like...see pic.



This picture shows the coach roof side,
made from one lovely board over a foot wide.
Seen from the inside.


Does anyone have a top tip for telling one from t'other? Perhaps when I sand it down I'll be able to tell from the smell...or the oily feel if it is Teak.

On a tenously linked subject I used a scrap of marine ply that was lurking in the depths of the lazarette to help my 8 year old daughter make a boomerang for her Australasia Art Project. What a difference to cheap ply I am used to! Beautiful rich dark mahogany for every layer and came up beautifully with just a coat of sanding sealer.... needless to say she/we won a prize

thanks everyone for your comments.
Jonnie

 

[ceproof87]

Start by washing the teak peice with sopa and water it reduce the oxidation and dirt on the surface. Next step is sand the wood with grain sandpaper. After sanding you will see the original color of the teak.

 

[xeitosaphil]

Quicker way to do it would be to get a straight piece of broken glass, or cabinet scraper and remove some varnish and the UV degraded top surface of the timber. If what you are left with is pinkish/red its Mahogany. If its brown its Teak.

From what I can see, The coaming looks like mahogany as there is no figuring in the grain and it's a wide board, and the T&G looks like Teak, but I may be wrong?

Looking at the photos again blown up, it does look like it could be both Teak?

Once you have scraped the outer surface off, just put some water on the face of it and it will deepen what ever colour you have, bit like varnishing but without the hassle.

So what colour do you have? Red or Brown?