Our boat has a lot of teak. It’s old, and worn out. Jeni’s stripped off all the brown Cetol now, and I know why the previous owners slathered every inch of woodwork in the stuff. To hide all the problems…..
First order of business was to remove and replace all the screws that were shining through. Most of them had the Phillips head slot either sanded off or so cammed-out that I had to use a damaged screw extractor to pull them. Those would be replaced with new. The old plug holes were slightly smaller than the conventionally available 1/2″ and 3/8″ teak plugs from the marine supply super store, so they needed to be counterbored with the appropriate Forstner bit so the new plugs would fit. Next, each hole was countersunk with a tapered bit, new screws installed, and teak plugs epoxied over the screw heads.
The cap rails and trail boards have been sanded down so many times that plugs were popping and screw heads are showing. Some of those needed some serious filling, and some scraps of teak came in handy after some cleaning up and chiseling.
The starboard cap rail was badly split and required inlaying some thin strips of teak to fill the crack, but after a fair amount of work don’t look all that bad.
The starboard rub rail also had a pretty significant split and needed quite a bit of effort with clamps and epoxy.
Some of the horizontal screws in the cap rail had popped completely through because of so much previous sanding and you could actually see the threads showing. Those spots required some more creative filling with some small blocks and scraps of teak cut to fit and epoxied in place.
Now with everything repaired, we can finally give the teak one more final sanding and start working on a finish coating to protect the wood.