Varnish/oil or bare wood.

[apindrans]

Just contemplating the bare timber on my newly acquired Vertue. The bulwark, and cockpit coaming is bare timber right now (teak or some other h/wood). Should I oil/varnish or leave bare? Varnish/oil does look good, but will be slippery; raw wood has functionality, but what about long life?

[gordonmc]

Congratulations on acquiring a fine boat. I have been a long term admirer. A Vertue neighbour of mine has a mix of untreated teak and varnished... maybe this compromise might suit you.

Essentially the vertical surfaces, coachhouse and cockpit coamings etc have been varnished with toerails, grab handles etc weathered to silver. The contrast works well.

The varnish used is Deks Ojlie.

[Randy Sweet]

I thought Deks Ojlie was an oil ?

[Lucky Luke]

The capping rails on the bulwark and cockpit coamings will be better left barewood, that's functionally far better, but that is all, to my opinion. Coamings specially look so better varnished!

The thing is, if I remember well, that these capping rails were not teak but iroko. They will not, if that is the case, look as good as teak would, and have to be maintained using oil (any of these funny mixes that pretend to be "teak oil" (try to extract a drop of oil out of teak...just to check!), but anyway do their job.

PS: Me too, I thought Oiljes would have meant just "oil"...???