What Nautor say about teak

[Boat44]

The silvering of teak is a natural process and is almost impossible to avoid. Most teak cleaners avaiable on the market will remove the natural oil in the teak, making cleaning more frequent necessary and therefore reduce the lifespan of the deck. The cleaners can also do damage to other parts of the boat, for instance, the caulking, the anodising on aluminium deck fittings and toerails and gelcoat.

We therfore strongly advise against using any chemicals to clean the deck. instead, we recommedn using mild (not concentrated) dish washing soap and water with a soft brush, which should be used across the grain and not along it, otherwise the softness of the teak is removed too aggresively. It is the slight removal of the soft part of the teak leaving the harder grain proud that gives teak its natural non-slip properties.

Rinsing teak regulalry prevents it drying out. It is a good idea to rinse with salt water because after it has dried, the remaining tiny salt crystals attract moisture in the air, helping to keep the teak moist. These actions will help, but not prevent the teak from turning silver, although this is not an indication of a deck that has been badly cared for, only a prudent owner. The silver is merely on the surface protecting the perfectly oiled teak just below.

Teak does not need oil to maintain its quality as it has oli built in. The only way to really return the decks to their natural colour it ti have them sanded down but, as mentioned above, with the deep grain of teak, a lot of material has to be removed to achieve an even finish.

(I hope nautor wont be too upset at me for copying this. I have left out one bit on cleaning oil stains)

Hope that helps.

 

[jason -and the arguenauts]

It's interesting because I was wondering what to do with my inherited teak decking. If you dont know whether cleaners have been used ( in my case the owner left a fair number of cleaner bottles behind so I suspect they have) do you use some teak oil for a first going over or not?

 

[emnick]

Teak

Thanks for that.
Our decks are a little 'ribbed' SWMBO wants to sand them down so as they are smooth. She thinks that the softer grain will hold salt and dust etc causing them to wear quicker.

I on the other hand think that they are best left alone. Wonder who is right??. I would only sand if I wanted to sell on for asthetics only. The teak is 12.5mm thick

 

[FullCircle]

And here is an alternative view, which I happen to subscribe to. 5 seasons with mine, and no silver.

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 **** 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.

 

[Boat44]

Good question; not sure!

I would guess, if you wanted to get back to the natural look, treat as above and chemicals will eventualy come off / leach out.

If you wnat the "new" look carry on with the chemicals.

 

[KellysEye]

>Teak does not need oil to maintain its quality as it has oli built in.

As a generalisation that's total nonsense. It might apply in Scandinavia but not the tropics or the Med. Takes a number years but it dries enough to absorb water, some of it then rots and the rest goes so brittle you can snap 2x1 bit between two fingers.

 

[boatmike]

Never quite understand why peeps screw thin bits of wood onto perfectly good plastic......... They cut down gert big trees fer that stuff y'know.... I have owned 3 wooden boats in the past and just love GRP.....

 

[Blue5]

And here is an alternative view, which I happen to subscribe to. 5 seasons with mine, and no silver.

.

And how often do you use the chemicals to keep the teak from going silver?

 

[FullCircle]

And how often do you use the chemicals to keep the teak from going silver?

once a season. Its just turning now, and I admit to nearly getting of my backside to doing it last weekend.

We have had the same 2 litres bottles since 2005. We have teak toerails, grabrails, hatch surrounds, cockpit seating on 35ft. And we did the transom platform of D3Bs boat this year too.

 

[johnalison]

Rinsing with sea-water will not stop a teak deck from looking awful within a couple of years. It may have done so in the old days, with forest-grown wood, but plantation teak will discolour and grow mildew (black) and lichen (dark patches). It seems that some kind of chemical treatment will be necessary for most of us, with the resulting finish being a matter of taste.

 

[LauraKatie]

I have seen so many many posted views upon the way to take care of teak.
My island packet came with several coats of CETOL to its guard rail teak. In places the coatings had been compromised and loked terrible.
About two years ago a chemically striped the coatings to reveal the natural teak.
Yes it has now taken the true and natural silver grey.
Teak is a soft wood and 100% natural. It has evolved for thousands of years and has been selected by boat builders for hundreds of years because of its durability and weathering caracteristics.
It is a shame that there are so many expensive and in my view unnecessary products thrown at us to allegedly take care of this material.
My own experience is leave it be. Yes keep it clean of green algea or build up of muck but in essence let its natural ability to remain functional prevail.
Keep your money in your pocket and keep sailing!

 

[Chris_Robb]

I think TCM's solution is way over the top. All I do to my teak decks is at launch time spray them with 4 to 1 mixture of Brintons MMC (Moss and mould cleaner). Then leave it. I have never wiped them or brushed them. All I ever do is throw the odd bucket of seawater over them. They are what I would describe as maintenance free compared with any other decks. Do not use any cleaner of any sort, and do not scrub even across the grain.

This way they will last AND look good and be no work.

Teak is discoloured by green mould, and then by mildew which gives makes the grain fine streaks of black. Using MMC kills this off and clears all the mildew from the grain. Initial use take several weeks to come clean, thereafter use once a year.