teak

[tassie_yacht]

Hi guys, just a simple question. How do you achive the bleached teak look. My deck is dark and drab. I would realy like the light clean look. Thanks.

[mizzenman]

I have always been slightly pussled by talk of bleachers and oils made for teak. We never use anything on ours.

Just let the sun bleach it,
the saltwater spray rinse it,
and the bare feet skrub it. :)

[Boatsmith]

The best maintenance for teak decks is sanding. (remember holy stones). This keeps the grain flat. With raised grain dirt will catch in the low spots, collect moisture which collects more dirt.... This dirt when walked on eats away more soft grain and on and on it goes. If you use a brush on your teak deck, you can chew up lots of the soft gain. Us boat carpenters like that a lot!!! Some people use a scotchbrite pad, this not as bad but a hard sanding block is the best. For a color refresh you can pour on a mix of simple green and chlorine bleach.Then rinse off. Doesn't sound too good for the fish, eh. The more often you sand the finer grit required and the less material removed. Teak decks are expensive to install and to maintain, ain't no free lunch. They're also hot underfoot deplete the old growth forests. Plantation teak can eventually fill the need but many of the teak trees that are cut for boats are several hundred years old and the plantations have some catching up to do. David www.boatsmithfl.com

[brad9798]

Years of not putting anything on it ... kind of like cedar!

[rbgarr]

"Comet", lightly scrubbed with a "Dobie" pad. Make any sense to you? They are US products afaik.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Hi guys, just a simple question. How do you achive the bleached teak look. My deck is dark and drab. I would realy like the light clean look. Thanks.

Scrub it with salt water.

Very regularly.

[Jay Greer]

Larry and Lynn Pardey always have had great looking decks on their boats. Theirs is a simple secret. Wash down decks with salt water and dry with a swab.
Occasionaly they scrub, cross grain, with mild dish soap and a 3M pad.
Jay

[RFNK]

I note that all your replies are from Europe and US. I had this problem with a WRC house - all the pictures from US showed this lovely, bleached WRC but the WRC on our house just went black. I eventually contacted the timber advisory centre in NSW who advised me that it's a fungus, it's Australia wide and there's nothing you can do about it. It doesn't actually damage the timber but it looks lousy. I asked about oils - they said, sure, then it'll go black faster! Now, I don't know if the same fungus floating in the air all over Australia can cause teak to go black. you would think not but I see an awful lot of quite ugly, dark grey teak decks in Australia and I'm currently in the process of removing one from my boat. If I were you I'd certainly try the regular washing with salt water as suggested above for a few months. It may be that the boats I've seen aren't treated in that way and the fresh water from rain has caused the blackish look, possibly from the fungus. Rick

[tassie_yacht]

Thanks for the great replys, Looks like more salt water to me. Thanks again.