Teak Restoration

When I considered the state of the decks after the acquisition, I made up my mind that in order to fix the leaks, and repaint the deck, that all the deck hardware would need to be removed.  I already posted on the toe rails, and reconditioning the decks.  You'll have to excuse the seemingly out of order posting, but some of these tasks are ongoing, or have taken a back seat to other tasks due to resource or timeline constraints.

The teak exterior trim had all but lost its varnish coating.  I really don't know how long it had been since anyone had done some maintenance, but I guess it was a while.  There were just random patches of finish left on areas of the handrails, and other trim pieces.
Here is an example of the state of things, and its pretty representative of all the teak on board. 

The pieces that are teak:

1.) Bow toe rails, extending back about 2.5 feet.

2.) Transom toe rail, across the entire transom, and extending up about 1 foot.

3.) 2 sets of handrails, 2 foot and 8 feet long.

4.) 2 cabin top trim rails, 10 feet long

5.) 2 companionway slides, 5 feet long

6.) Companionway drop board frame (pictured above)

7.) Fore and aft cleat bases

8.) other minor pieces and parts

In order to remove most pieces, it was necessary to first remove the plugs that covered the fastener heads.  I did this mainly with a 1/4" chisel.  By forcing the chisel into the center of the plug, I was able to carefully remove bits of the plug, until the plug came out.  Whoever had placed them, they did not glue them in, which was my good fortune.

With the plugs removed, the piece was just unbolted like any other hardware, with the only difference being that care had to be taken in removing the bolt or screw from the wood.  The bolt heads can catch at the edge of the wood, and tear off a splinter.  Ask me how I know.

Getting the pieces, as with all other deck hardware, off the deck and pried free of the bedding material was easy.  There was no bedding material left.

With all the wood off, the cleanup process began.  Getting the pieces clean of old dried bedding material was the first step.  This was accomplished mostly with a $1.99 tool from Ace that was for re-glazing windows.  It has a pretty sharp scraping edge that worked well for raising the crusty dried on bedding.  It worked equally well for getting of the odd patch of varnish.  Actually, I think it was Cetol, with its anemic orange tinge.

Next, I sanded each piece, 60, 100 and 120 grit. This was a bit of a balancing act as one has to be care to make sure that not too much material is removed, yet trying to get at some good wood.  Here is a before and after up to this point:

With the pieces sanded, it became easy to find the defects, such as cracks and splitting parts.  I repaired these by carefully prying the crack open, forcing in some wood glue, and then clamping.

After all the pieces are sanded, and repaired as best I could, it was time for finish.  This was another decision that was made after much research.  I considered long and hard not applying any finish, but rather letting the teak weather.  However, due to some of the pieces already poor condition, I decided that it would probably last longer and look better to finish it with something.

That something is Honey Teak, by Signature Finishes.  Its an interesting product.  Its labeled as a "urethane polyester enamel".  Well that about covers the gamut of possible products.  Whatever it is, it appears to be toluene based, and is a 2 part product.  The system is applied in 2 parts, the Honey Teak, and the Clear Topcoat.  One applies 3 coats of the Honey Teak, which has some tint and UV inhibitors, first.  Then, multiple coats of the Clear Topcoat.  These are applied one coat after another, as soon as the previous coat tacks up.  In this way, all the coats can be applied in one day.

I was a bit concerned about this methodology.  Having finished some woodwork before, I know that it is usually thin coats, sanded in between that produce the best results.  However, I had to remember that we weren't building a watch here, and these pieces were not fine furniture.

In the end, it turned out very well.  The finish is very tough, and should be somewhat easily repaired and touched up when the time comes.

I now have these pieces mounted back on deck, and I will update this post with some pictures once I have them.  I still need to plug the mounting holes, and touch up the plugs.  I update you with how that goes as well.

Non-Skid Prep and Painting

I did quite a bit of research before deciding on the Durabak product.  I was really thinking Treadmaster for a period of time, but he cost of that stuff was going to be prohibitive.  I made my decision based mostly on various forum entries comparing the products.

There are two general schools of thought on non-skid.  One is that the non-skid areas need to be non-skid, but not at the expense of appearance or comfort.  As such, there are a lot of product that incorporate sand in a hard two part or one part deck paint.  Think Interlux or Awlgrip.  The benefits here are easy to clean surface, that you could walk on all day without your feet getting sore.  However, a hard easy to clean surface does not sound to me like something that will be very aggressive in holding power.

The other school of thought is that the non-skid areas are to be as non-skid as possible, and is approached as more of a safety issue.  This is how I think of it. If I have to go on deck while the boat is thrashing about, and the nonskid keeps me from possibly slipping overboard, then that is what I want. This is where you would see your Treadmaster or other applied products.  The downside to these products is they tend to collect dirt easier than some others, I hear.  Also, they can be uncomfortable underfoot.

The Durabak is a rubberized, single part paint.  It has rubber granules mixed in the product and is used mainly in industrial applications.  I read how some users had punished the Durabak by dragging huge buoys, anchors and the like across the deck, without damaging the surface.  It sounded like what I wanted, and was about 1/4 the price of Treadmaster, which made it economical for my use.

Prep

My existing non-skid was a molded gelcoat pattern that looked like burlap cloth.  There were lots of pits where dirt, water and mold could collect, and was impossible to get clean.  Since the Durabak prep called for a 40 grit sanded surface for fiberglass or gelcoat, I decided to just grind it off.  I was aided in this by the design of the deck mold, where each nonskid area is built up about 3/16" over the regular smooth surfaces.  This allowed me to use my 6" Bosch ROS with a 40 grit pad to easily sand off the nonskid right up to the edges with little fear of touching the freshly polished smooth areas below.

It took about 2-3 days of sanding to get all surfaces down to an equal grade.  I think if I had it to do over again, I may have sought out a more aggressive grit or machine to get the bulk of the old crap off, as it took longer than I anticipated.

I used my shop vac to clean up the dust.  As you can imagine, it is a very messy job, but the good news was since the material was mostly gel coat, there was no fiberglass itching.  I did manage to get dust everywhere though, and it took about 4 hours to vacuum everything up.

Taping off

The next step was to tape off each non skid area.  I used a combination of automotive detail tape, fine line tape, and regular blue painters tape.
First, I used a blue 3M 1/4" wide flexible automotive tape to tape off each curved corner.

Next, I taped off all the straight runs with tan 3M 5/8" automotive Fine Line tape.  This tape does not bend tight corners at all.

 

Then, I filled in the areas in between with regular blue 3M painter tape from Home Depot.  This is a detail of the final product

Painting

With everything taped off, it was time to go.  We did a final wipedown with Toulene, and started painting.  The best thing would have been to paint each area, do the subsequent coats just as the prior coat was tacking up, and then pull the tape while the paint was a little soft.  I did not have the time to do each area separately, so we just did it all, and came back after the paint had dried enough to walk on.

Here is a pretty good example of what the surface looks like:

Here, things are pretty much all done.  Ready to pull tape.

Tape coming off:

All done!

I can tell you that this surface is very aggressive, and really does grip well.  If I'm working on deck, I need to have socks on or my feet start to hurt after an hour or so.  I've since done some work and do not worry a bit about damaging this surface.  Stuff just bounces off, and I cannot imagine anything short of an anchor being purposely thrown against it gouging it.  I hope I never have to get it off.

Memorial Day Working Weekend - Gel Coat Compounding

I'm a little behind in posts as there just is not enough time to do the work, and post about it.

I took a few days off and managed to string 6 consecutive days together around Memorial Day.  This was an excellent opportunity to get some good work done.

The focus on the 6 days was to get the deck prepped for painting the non-skid surfaces with Durabak, a rubberized non-skid used primarily in industrial applications, but not unheard of in marine applications.  It has good non-skid properties, and is relatively easy to apply. (sand, wipe down, apply)

In order to get the non-skid areas ready, I first needed to sand, compound, and polish the non-non-skid areas.  This allows for a good surface to apply tape for taping off the individual nonskid sections.  Also, in order to paint, I first was going to be grinding off the original non-skid texture.  Therefore, I did not have to spend anytime cleaning up from the compounding and polishing.

Wet-Sanding

To get things kicked off, I purchased 3M Wetordry sandpaper in 600, 800 and 1000 grit.  After looking around town, I bought from Amazon for about half of what I could get it for locally.  I bought it in 9x11 sheets, 5 sheets to a pack, and 2 packs of each grit.

The 600 grit took the longest as we were not only removing all the oxidized gelcoat, but also sanding down imperfections, and removing grime and other stuff that would not come off during the cleaning.

I backed the sandpaper with the 3M yellow sponges with some green scrubby scotchbrite material on the back.  This way, if I found some gunk I could try to get it up on the fly.

Once the 600 was done, the 800 and 1000 went fairly quickly, as I was just looking for consistent scratch patterns after each grit.  The 1000 grit leaves the surface slightly shiny all by itself.  I've read that a person could just wetsand all the way up to 2000 grit, bypass the compounding process, and move directly to polishing phase.  That won't be an option here.

The Memorial Day weekend was very hot, and I was forced off the boat by 3PM most days as it was just too hot.  However, I did get all the sanding done in 1 day.

Compounding Phase

For compounding, I went with Presta products based on some online forum suggestions.  They are supposed to have abrasive media that will break down into finer and finer particles during compounding.  This helps to eliminate swirl marks, and makes it easier to get a good shine.

Presta Get Coat Compound is what I started with.

I bought a Makita buffing machine 9227CX3, with variable speed and a locking trigger.  It seems to be the industry standard for buffing machines.

For those of you lucky folks who have not had the absolute pleasure of wielding this kind of machine, I can tell you it builds muscle, as well as character. 

As soon as i tried it, I was immediately reminded of the time I rented a floor buffing machine during a flooring project at my house.  The guy at the rental place told be to be careful at first until I got the hang of it.  "Maybe try starting in the middle of the biggest room so you don't hit the wall with it."  "Ok, chief!" I think to myself. After all, the thing had a panic switch on it, and would stop right away if you let go.  So I hauled it home, and took it to a bedroom, which was not the biggest room, and fired it up. SLAM! In about 2 seconds, the machine had slammed itself into the nearest wall, and crushed in a nice sized piece of drywall.  "Huh..." I thought. "Good thing no one was here to witness that!"  This time, lets try again, but with a bit more care. SLAM!  Another hole in the wall.  "Bastard!" Lots of inertia here. Third time was the charm.

So I did not put any holes in the boat, and it was certainly not as difficult to control as the floor buffer, but occasionally, it would try to take me for ride.  Also, it is real easy to get the power cord wrapped up in the spinning wheel.  Especially when your body is contorted into strange positions to start with, sweat is running in your eye, which is already full of compound spray from the buffing wheel, and the machine bucks uncontrollably, catching the cord and stopping the machine.  If your lucky, the machine is still humming and you swear and move on.  If not, you head down and replace the power cord.

So the process is 1.) Load Compound, 2.) At 600RPM, spread compound over a 2'x2' area, and work it in for about 1 minute, 3.) Kick the speed to about 1200 RPM and work it for 30-45 seconds, 4.) Kick it up to about 4000RPM, and carefully buff dry.

Some key points
1.) Keep the pad moist, but not too moist.  Keep the working area wet, as to keep the media working, yet try to limit the amount of compound spraying off the wheel, or "sling" as it is known by the pros.  I must need more practice at this, as I could not strike the right balance.  I think my main problem was the hull surface was just too hot once the sun moved overhead.  I tried to keep working in the shade, in the mornings.
2.) Keep the buffer moving at all times.
3.) Let the buffer do the work.  Don't bear down on the pad.
4.) Know when to replace the pad.  If you start losing thickness of the wool, it gets much harder to control, and the pad tends to "suction" to the surface.

Compounding took a day.

Polishing phase

Same as compounding phase, but with Presta Ultra-Cutting Cream instead, and a polishing grade wool pad.

Polishing took another day.

Next Step

I will eventually wax with Colonite Fleet Wax.  Another industry standard product.

Before and After

I don't have very good photos to illustrate this.  Its difficult to get a good one with a cameraphone that shows the difference in gloss.

Before:

After:

This photo probably best illustrates the level of gloss.  There was absolutely no reflection prior to this.

I did not get to the paint prep phase this weekend, but I did get to it in subsequent weeks.  That will be the next post.