Teak decks that look good

[paul salliss]

I am very confused with the most straight forward way to keep exposed teak looking good.

1) Yes - I want it to look good, and I am very happy to spend time on this
2) I dont live on my boat and when on board want to use her not be a total slave to the teak

In summary what is the happy medium here between care for the teak and time spent doing the chore's,

any advice would be most welcome

 

[joliette]

It depends what type of look you want to go for. If you want that new wood look then you'll have to go through the process of applying a teak cleaner / brightner. If you go down this route the look you achieve will not last very long and you'll need to go through the whole process again. The alternatives are to go for a "finish for life" i.e. apply Coelan (http://www.kjhowells.com/coelan.html) or (do what I do) and give the teak a scrub - always across the grain to avoid wasting the wood away! - with as many free buckets of sea water as it takes. This produces a nice silver fresh salt scrubbed look, which doesn't cost a penny!

 

[paul salliss]

teak decks that look good - reply

that is very much appreciated and sounds like good advice

thank you

 

[Firefly625]

if you are happy with a silver teak deck then Patio Magic is wonderful, just fill a watering can with a mixed solution of water and Patio Magic and water your deck... then do nothing, the manufacters have confirmed safe to use on boat teak and will not effect GRP or rubber caulking.. will stop any green algae and keeps looking clean all season..

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=patio+magic&tag=googhydr-21&index=aps&hvadid=6403681009&ref=pd_sl_1ndnyzfp3d_e

 

[Nick_H]

I'd say the happy medium is to treat at the start of the season with degreaser and oxalic acid (Wessex Chem's/Teak Wonder etc., stages 1&2), and then clean with normal detergent each time you wash the boat.

Remember always to brush across the grain, not along it. Many of us prefer to use a nylon scouring pad (fitted to a shurhold handle and head, so you use it like a broom) as it seems to keep the teak smoother.

edit: you need to decide if you want to keep the decks straw brown (like when they were new) or are happy to let them go silver. If you like them brown, then you need the acid from time to time. If you're happy with silver, then you only need to keep them clean.

IMO, don't be tempted to use the sealer (stage 3). It goes yellow, you get uneven wear, and looks terrible if not continuously maintained.

 

[gravygraham]

Hey ho, it's the old teak conundrum again. It's a bit like having your cake and wanting to eat it Paul. I'm not too sure there's an easy answer to be had, (short of ripping it all up and replacing with TeakTek or whatever those artificial decks are made from). I've lived with a teak cockpit, bathing platform and coaming tops in various states of grandeur and decay this last few years but only a boat's owner can decide how much time and elbow grease is worth it.

Invariably we'd do the stiff brush and quick rinse over and be reasonably satisfied - until those balmy summer hours in the marina got the better of us and out came the chemistry set to make it all look like new again (well, almost).

 

[paul salliss]

Hi Gravygraham,

your reply was spot on, my post was a bit cake & eat it,

I will mull this over, on balence I think the labour of love will be worth it.............

 

[rafiki_]

I brighten at the start of the season, and oil twice a season. Many on here do not oil, but I like a uniform look, so with the bathing platform exposed, and the cockpit sheltered by teh canopy, this is not possible without oiling twice a season. I have been persuaded to try Rustins Danish Oil, and will report back in a couple of months.

 

[jfm]

I am very confused with the most straight forward way to keep exposed teak looking good.

1) Yes - I want it to look good, and I am very happy to spend time on this
2) I dont live on my boat and when on board want to use her not be a total slave to the teak

In summary what is the happy medium here between care for the teak and time spent doing the chore's,

any advice would be most welcome

Each to their own, but I cannot stand them looking silver; they have to be straw brown. No professionally kept yacht would ever have decks anything other than straw brown. To do this, you have to use the 2 part cleaner quite often, with elbow grease. Best if you get someone to do it imho. And no treatments like oil or Colean or anything else

To reduce the labour, cover them as much as is practical when you're away from the boat.

Also a power sand every couple of seasons helps. Folks say this rubs the wood away, but in fact you only need to remove 1/10th -1/20th of a mm to get the brand new look back so you'll never sand the wood away at that rate

All imho, and you'll get lots of different views on this

 

[Bandit]

I am tempted to try Boracol which is a wood treatment/rot treatment as well as a biocide.

Halberg Rassy seem to reccomend it.

The other problem there is teak and teak ie slabs of teak planks set as a deck and teak veneer over ply.

Over zealous scrubbing and sanding will soon give you the true natural beauty of plywood if you are not careful with the latter aand it costs a fortune to re do. I found out after i had scrubbed mine that it is a no no.

 

[Firefly625]

just for the record... I know I posted a comment about Patio Magic will keep teak decks looking silver... for the small area of teak on my Hardy (the bathing platform), I use teak cleaner and like it looking brown..... the colour it should be!

 

[tico]

The Definative guide pt1

With Acknowledgements to TCM.... heres the guide to teak maintenance...
You'll sometimes see brand-new looking decks at some boat shows that are actually selling secondhand boats. Your teak deck can look like that again. Here’s how to do it.

My own background is having swankyish boats in the med, built/maintained three teak patios outside houses one of them 200 square metres, employed various “experts” and skippers, and 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. Everyone can tell if it's oiled, or if it's got protective finishes on, and so can everyone else. It looks a bit yellowish, uniform, plastic and non-natural - and it's actually not as grippy as natutral teak. There's also fake teak, which some boat builders can tell you is actually twice the price of real teak. But we humans are very good at identifying real and synthetic materials even from a good distance away. Teak should look like raw teak – just a like new boat at the boat show. Any teak can look like that again.

2. Firstly, the chemicals. You need two-part cleaner which can be obtained from Wessex Chemicals. I haven’t found anyone else who does the right stuff, althou othes have better names than er “2-part teak cleaner” which is what they call it.

You get this in 1-litre or 5-litre or 10litre plastic containers, a few quid a litre. Expect to use around 3/4 litre of each for a biggish 60foot boat at each clean. If you buy in bulk, mark the containers "part 1" and "Part2” clearly as the coloured dye can go off after year and yer can't easily tell which is which. Incidentally, the part two in concentrated form removes rust stains, which is handy, but make sure you rinse it afterwards.

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 “ridgy”, the floor mop will get destroyed and stick on the ridges. The Surehold range or similar is good - you get a long stick and put attachements onnit , red handle – that’;s the one, and get the flat attachment to which you can stick on a pad that looks like a panscrub. You want the very mildest one, a 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.

Okay, look you MIGHT need a brush if you teak is very heavily knackered and this is the first clean for years and years. A brush will get into the ridges - but digs out the softer material at the same time. So use a soft brush if you really must. But non-ancient boat or teack under five years old - no brush.

Oh, and you need a hose too, hopefully with a decent end attachment. Actually just a bare end is ok so the water “drops” out: it’s important NOT to have it on a “blast” setting like the cheapest hose ends – better ones have 6 options, and for teak you shd only use the setting for what feels like “rain”.

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 necessary.

Then wet the area with water from hose NOT blasting, just dribble about with the hose set to “gentle rain”.

Now, the key thing is that you need this to take a short amount of time - so hands and knees is hopeless as you will never do it more than once - an effective AND quick clean is what we want. I saw one guy cleaning the deck with toothbrush! – not for us I’m afraid.

4. Mix a mild dilution of Part 1 in a bucket and wipe it on to the teak with that floorpad mop thing. “5 water to 1 chemical” is the most severe you shd use ever on mossy greenish teak, but try 10water to 1chemical to start if it's just greyish.

The teak will go very dark almost immediately, the colour of mahogany or even very very strong coffee. Urgh! – a bit worrying! And the spashes on the bits you haven’t done – they’re just as bad! Don’t worry.

Keep putting the solution on, and agitate the stuff over the teak, across the grain. Use that floor mop to sloosh it around, always acros the grain gently, with the soft spongy pad.

As it goes dark, there's a tendency to not bother rubbing everywhere cos it’s “doing something” but you do need to "apply" it to the wood with the sponge/mop thing, not just rinse over. At the edges, use a mild handheld green plastic panscrub – again, not one too rough to wipe your face with – to get the edges – otherwise we won’t have the “new” look as the middle will be clean, the edges murky.

Saftey warning: SLIPPERY with Part1 :the teak loses a LOT of it’s anti-slip properties with this part 1 on so be careful and keep kids and the unwary away. On an open a sailing boat deck, be especially careful as you move around – and with the next stage too. But when finished it’s back to normal, of course.

5. Pretty much as soon as the diluted part 1 has been put on everywhere and gone worryingly dark brown, it's done the business. So once it is all uniformly wet and dark, rinse the area, and tons of brown gunk will come off, often quite a shocking amount. But imagine how filthy your car would be if you left it unwashed, just rinsed a bit now and again, for a year or more. You need it all this off. I use a rubber window wiping blade on a stick to swoosh it all out. Again, don't blast with water - use low pressure and lots of it.

6. Now the part two, the red stuff. Again , mild solution. 10water to one P2 on wet teak after part 1. This is worrying to put on cos it bleaches back the colour, and even the bucket seems to leave a mark. Argh! Again, don't worry - it will all come back bright as the bleachiness goes all over. Not much skil needed - provided you stay at a mild dilution, you can't put "too much" on - it returns to it's natural colour, so it won't go white or anything like that.

 

[tico]

Definative guide pt 2

Another warning: this is a mild acid, so it will sting cuts in unprotected hands and feet. But your hands and feet don’t drop off, or at least mine haven’t been damaged anyway and I’ve done this a fair bit.

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 part 1 get’s the gunk off – this seems to hardly lift any more dirt, just turn back the colour. You do need to rinse off the part 2 though.

If you missed an area with p1, it'll be silvery grey after p2, so yerd have to start again –or praps leave it til next time.

You need to carefully rinse metal items around on the floor – stainless or aluminium won’t get horribly damaged provided you get the stuff off during the rinsing so target these especially.

I wipe with a “blade” (like a windscreen wiper) to speed up the drying process, and get the dirt off without needing tons and tons of water.

Walking on the now-clean teak whilst it's drying means you lose the "utterly fab clean new-boat" look, but clean footmarks do evaporate so it's ok, ish.

Now, the teak looks brand new when it dries. Hurrah! Is it clean tho? Get a white tissue and wet it, wipe on a bit of the teak, and the tissue will remain white clean. It's clean enough to eat food from.

7. Soon the teak will get filthy and go silvery grey again. Why's that? Well it's cos of the rain, or the air or (mostly) cos you or the crew did it with your feet. In the med, 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 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 nitwits.

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.

Clean the pontoon where you step aboard for a start, using 2-part teak cleaner again, and this time use a brush cos it will be filthy, it’s already ridged, and erm, it’s not your expensive boat.

If the quayside of you normal berth is concrete, clean and then 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 up before 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 feels as hard as nails – dense and unyielding- but is actually quite susceptible to being washed away, perhaps like very weak concrete.

To keep it from disintgrating, you need to never clean it and never wash it, and never step on it and keep it covered ! - but this aint possible on a boat. 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 stays new and flat and not-ridgy for much longer. The rain does this – it’s a moderate jetwash that happens lots of times per year. So, if you had a cover, or individual covers for bits of the deck, your teak won't go ridgy anywhere near as quickly. The cover needs to allow air to circulate to stop it going mouldy a bit, but never with rain landing on it. Le Grand Bleue is Abramovich’s ugly ship with loads of playtime boats incl a big 70 foot powerboat - and the first such boat (Sirius) had individual canvas /Sunbrella covers for the teak held down with poppers when owners aren’t on board - 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. Be very very careful with a beltsander cos it will eat a lot of material very quickly: much safer is an orbital sander with about the grittiest grit you can find: yeah, 40 grit might feel awful to your hands but it still takes a while to get the teak flat. First off, the sander dances around as it “grabs” on the raised black caulking. Then, it starts at the hard raised ridges but it still takes time even with 40grit. Get a decent machine with lots of watts – the £12 850w units aren’t good enuf and get groaningly slowed down.

Its ok to leave it a bit de-ridged rather than grind down to "new" – clean as above and you still have newe looking deck with far less ridges than before. Professionals seem to insist on whamming it down to “new wood all over” which must use more material and limit the number of times you can sand.

11 Finally, about the semco and other protective coverings again: 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 these over winter, that would be okay. But would a top-class superyacht or classic racer use these protecvtive finishes, or teak? No they blimmin well wouldn't, they'd be chucked out of st tropez and the skipper doomed to everlasting ridicule! Teak means teak.

 

[gjgm]

I am very confused with the most straight forward way to keep exposed teak looking good.

1) Yes - I want it to look good, and I am very happy to spend time on this
2) I dont live on my boat and when on board want to use her not be a total slave to the teak

In summary what is the happy medium here between care for the teak and time spent doing the chore's,

any advice would be most welcome

As is evident, each to his own.
In the cockpit, I like it to look like new teak, and find the Wessex twin pack does a season. The swim platform gets an annual one, but turns silver. Maybe a I give it another chemical session mid season
I like it to look like its unfinished wood; personally I shudder each time I pass an oiled deck, most of which look absolutely terrible to my eyes.

 

[benjenbav]

As is evident, each to his own.
In the cockpit, I like it to look like new teak, and find the Wessex twin pack does a season. The swim platform gets an annual one, but turns silver. Maybe a I give it another chemical session mid season
I like it to look like its unfinished wood; personally I shudder each time I pass an oiled deck, most of which look absolutely terrible to my eyes.

I am probably going to do mine (two part swoosh and rinse as above) at some point in the next couple of weeks and would expect it to look pretty good with not much more effort for most of the year. I'm talking dirty blonde at worst, not silver and, oh god, I do love a dirty blonde.

 

[AndieMac]

I'm talking dirty blonde at worst, not silver and, oh god, I do love a dirty blonde.

Your a naughty boy bjb...

 

[LeonF]

My teak deck was looking very grey, crusted and scabby. I usually give it a gentle scrub with a green sponge scrubber and a weak solution of Oxalic acid, but when wet it still looked like it had spores on it. In my absence the boat next to me jet washed the bottom of his tender, and covered my deck in barnacles etc, so jet washed half of it. Now I was a bit p****d at first, because the general advice is never ever jet wash, but then I had to admit it looked pretty good, and as it may well have been the first time it had ever been jetted in it's 15 year life, no real harm was done. So I borrowed the jet wash and did the other half,. Then gave it two coats of Polycell 3 in one mould remover, which got rid of any residual bits of green in the crevices, and does it look good.Bought mine on-line via Amazon, a lot cheaper if you buy a few.