Heretical Question of the Day...Thompson's Water Seal on a teak deck?

[TimScearce]

My 42 year old Cheoy Lee yawl has teak decking over plywood subdecking. The teak is embedded in thiokol and srewed down. The plywood is actually in good shape (recently resurveyed by a wooden boat surveyor who surveyed it pre-purchase in 1997) but there a still the usual leaks. In addition to replacing bad bungs and seams, would there be any additional advantage to using a wood sealer product like Thompson's?

Or is this just wishful thinking

[Ian McColgin]

Nope.

The purpose of a teak deck is good footing. You're not about to mess that up with varnish.

Even really nice tounge oil, which will keep the deck a nice golden color, will also come off on your white shorts.

Teak is not water permiable so your leaks are not affected one way or the other by a sealer product.

Let is silver in the sun. Wash with salt water and a good brush. Enjoy.

[Frank Wentzel]

Tim

Thompson's is just wax dissolved in solvnts. Don't expect much protection from it.

/// Frank ///

[Concordia..41]

I think the other Ian had something over there that he swore by that did help with leaks. Maybe he'll chime in or someone else can remember the product name.

Me, my decks aren't going to leak

[NormMessinger]

Ian on the Right is off sailing, I hear. But if you want an, ahem, stronger indorsement of Frank's hint at the efficacy of Thompson's Water Seal you aughta hear what Cleek had to say about it. The smoke may still be rising but I fear it was in an earlier generation of The Forum no longer available to the search engine.

[Ian McColgin]

Was it the Right Ian? Anyway, if I remember rightly, it's a glop, not a clear product.

[JormaS]

I also happen to own a Cheoy Lee with a teak on plywood deck. It was almost scrubbed to death by earlier owners and what is left is leaking here and there. I have been repairing the seams but it doesn´t help very much since I can´t find all the leaky spots. And the planks have checks that should be repaired. Many bungs must be letting water through as well.

So, it really would need a complete seam job plus a lot of duchmen. But I don´t have the time to do it now. I´m going to buy myself five or maybe even ten or more years by making the deck impermeable the same way Ian did.

After a light milling of the deck I´ll give it a CPES treatment and then 3 to 5 coats of a clear moisture curing polyurethane coating. Ian used a German product called Coelan and I am going to use another similar product which is somewhat cheaper. Why this and not varnish or paint? Because it is claimed to have excellent UV resistance (which I of course have not been able to test), it has excellent adhesion (tested), an elongation of 320% (tested), reasonable abrasion resistance (tested, not as good as I thought) and it is claimed to be open for diffusion, i.e. water vapor permeable. Also, resistant to relevant chemicals.

It is going to be slippery when wet and when I know how slippery I´ll add a coat with sand, nutshells or whatever where needed.

I´ll report back next year. In the meantime, please hold your thumbs up.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

I'll save you the trouble.

Was'nt Ian the Wright; t'was I....

Seven years ago now, I recaulked the bad bits on my leaking teak decks, for the "n"th time, then I sanded them, checked the moisture level with a moisture meter as per instructions, applied a coat of Coelan primer and six coats of clear Coelan.

Then I went sailing for the weekend and found that I now had a skating rink, so I applied two coats of ordinary chlorinated rubber deck paint with plenty of non-slip grit in it.

And that was the last time the boat had a single deck leak. [img]smile.gif[/img] [img]smile.gif[/img] [img]smile.gif[/img] [img]smile.gif[/img] [img]smile.gif[/img]

I only wish I had used it on the brightwork too.

[ 08-15-2003, 07:35 PM: Message edited by: Andrew Craig-Bennett ]

[TimScearce]

Drats....

As I read these replies, I keep thinking of a anecdote I heard about an american who traveled to Tibet to find a famous monk and asked him,

"What's the quickest way to enlightenment?"


Thank you all for your advise.

Thank you too, Andrew. I am too much of a romantic to paint my teak deckss just yet..

But it's been a dry summer... [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Ex-Oceangoddess]

Thompson's Water Seal is one of the lousiest products on the market - water beads up for the first rainstorm, and from then on you will rue the day you spent your money on this %^&&*()

[bret]

Coat upon relentless coat of good old linseed oil will even-tu-aaaly seal reaa-soon-abel seams (add saw dust, bread crumbs, bad dandruff, whatcha got on hand) until the true boaties point you to enlightenment. Sorry, Ive had a bad day in Hondaville. But with natural fixes you can always go new fangled.
Bret

[JormaS]

Sorry, Andrew it was and not Ian. BTW Andrew, I understand you used the grey coloured Coelan. If that´s correct, was there any particular reason for using that and not the clear version?

[thechemist]

Originally posted by TimScearce:
Drats....

As I read these replies, I keep thinking of a anecdote I heard about an american who traveled to Tibet to find a famous monk and asked him,

"What's the quickest way to enlightenment?"
<snip>

I presume the monk said something about sealing teak decks well the first time and not having further leaks? [enlightenment then presumably following having done something and then seeing that it worked]

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Originally posted by Jorma Salomaa:
Sorry, Andrew it was and not Ian. BTW Andrew, I understand you used the grey coloured Coelan. If that´s correct, was there any particular reason for using that and not the clear version?

Jormaa - I used the clear version, but I personally found the result too slippery in the wet, so I painted the decks. I was also unsure about the UV resistance of Coelan - I am now quite happy about that!

I have seen boats with new teak decks with the clear Coelan on them and whilst the appearance (that of a varnished deck, basically) is a little unusual, it is pleasant.

I did mine quite a few years ago; since then Coelan have come up with a nonslip additive for the clear product, which might be the answer.

Worth remebering that this stuff comes off with a hot air gun, if you decide you don't like it.

[JormaS]

Thanks Andrew. Clear Coelan definitely looks like varnish and apparently is very slippery, but I assume the pigmented one is slippery, too.
I made a small trial with anti-slip powder and it seemd to be OK, although not as efficient as sand. The surface became matt and did not look that nice. Matt paint looks somehow better than matt varnish to me. There is one more thing: Even if Coelan is abrasion resistant it does become scratched which probably results in a matt finish in areas with much traffic. Also, like you, I´m a bit sceptical about the resistance to ultra violet in the long run. That, and the time for the coating to become too hard will ultimately decide its useful life.

I´m still going to use clear because later I can always top it with grey and maybe leave the covering boards with the clear stuff.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

That's exactly what I thought - also with the clear stuff, you can see what is going on underneath and satisfy yourself there are no air bubbles and so on.

My mistake was not to take it over the covering boards - I used varnish on them - next spring the (remaining!) varnish is coming off and Coelan is going on!

[Stephen Smith]

Andrew, I was considering using Coelan to provide a seal for the deck on my Folkboat. I have stripped off all the old canvas to expose the plywood deck underneath. I have filled in some damaged areas with a thickened epoxy and as the plywood is not exactly pretty I was planning on painting over the Coelan coating. Do you think that this is a reasonable way to go or should I revert back to my first thought of cloth / epoxy ?
Steve

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

It's been done, as a replacement for canvas, on a formerly canvassed deck - there is a description in a back copy of Classic Boat, about the Laurent Giles sloop "Droleen 2", but frankly I would go for glass/Dynel cloth and epoxy in your case. Tougher and probably cheaper. It's what I did with my own coach roof after I stripped off the canvas I laid when I first bought the boat.