Dealing with the Deck After the Teak Comes Off !

[Trisailing]

I second the Kiwi-Grip. Make sure to pull the tape as soon as you apply it. Search http://www.youtube.com for videos on applying it.
See this one:

YouTube - kiwi grip application.wmv

Trisailing

[jimbim]

Was finally able to get back online (sailing into Nagasaki yesterday) and appreciate all the responses. Could be that Kiwi-Grip is the way I should go. Sounds like the sort of product I would be happiest working with.
I will spend more time looking at their product, though. I couldn't hear the youtube clip in the email cafe I was in
cheers and thanks

[osirissail]

Since the OP was about deck covering material - such as the various types of vinyl "rubber" matting that is glued down - Teak deck removal, et. al., is interesting by not germane to the discussion.
- - The deck covering is a great and quick way to cover up an unsightly repaired/patched deck. As with any project, cleanliness, environment considerations during application, and technique of application/gluing the material can make the difference between a few months of looking great and years of looking great.
- - Everything that is subject to the daily bombardment of UV will degrade. So even the best job of installation of these deck coverings will dry and shrink and crack much faster than gelcoated FRG or even real teak planked decks. So yearly (+/-) attention and replacement of "bad" parts is a consideration. Then there is the consideration that if you have to replace a badly installed section it will not be the same color as the older material due to UV bleaching.
- - A quick fix can be in the short run economical but in the long run very expensive. But in all cases the quality of the installation will make huge differences in the functional and appearance life of any material left out for Mother Nature to work on.

[jimbim]

Good points. I haven't yet found a place to haul out. Japan is an expensive place and it's hard to find a yard where I can cheaply haul out and is near a city where I can work. Now in Fukuoka. Lovely place. Maybe I will be able to find something here. There are a couple of lifts at two marinas I know of, but both are out of my price range. Might settle on a slipway in Karatsu, south of here, and I expect could work out fair terms with the yard owner over a bottle of shochu.

I've never seen the deck, so will strip off the teak and really only then know what I am dealing with. Hopefully I will be able to keep the deck as is, fill, fix and sand and I will be left with something that I can paint and be done with it. Plan is to paint the whole boat once the deck is repaired.

Had never really thought of a rubber coating when I first considered this, and it's true that it would be exposed to the elements and need constant attention. I was thinking of some sort of epoxy filler that I could paint, but had no clear notion of what it was.

Hopefully what I will find is a deck with some screw holes that can easily be filled. Touch wood.

[Mule]

OK, here we go.

1st the teak must come off and the screws must come out or be ground off if you cannot get them out. A FEIN tool with scraper/saw blades will help a great deal.

Next you need to determine if rot has set up in the core. Get your trusty hammer out and start tapping, you know the drill.

If you determine that you have lots of water intrusion in the core then it is decision time. Rip off the top glass layer and replace core or try to dry it in other ways. If deck is mushy in places it might be possible to do localized repair, or maybe not. There is grinding out the damaged area, there is drying and injecting. If you have a balsa core then it is generally pretty hopeless. That stuff has spaces between the blocks and rivers of trapped water run all over the boat deck doing its dirty work.

Some tricks in drying a deck going to the lowest point where the water should drain to, drill a 1"+-hole seal a shop vac hose over the hole, turn it on and walk away. Open an air source elsewhere so as to vac facilitate air flow toward the vac, cross your fingers and pray.

Now if this looks, due to the amount of water in the vac, you were successful then to get it bone dry, epoxy in a quick disconnect air fitting, attach an air hose to that, which goes to the appropriate regulator and set up a nitrogen tank and let it blow until the tank is flat. Moisture meter might be handy from the beginning to the end might be handy.

Now you are ready to inject with epoxy/resin. After you have a suitable foundation then you will then be ready to look at surface coating. There are various ways to go from pick up bed coatings, new teak, straight fiberglass, and so forth, some of which has already been mentioned.

Sadly, there is not a really easy, good answer. If you have Balsa you are likely screwed anyway and you may as well just cut your losses and start peeling the top layer and the core out and rebuild it from the overhead of the cabin on up. No point in building a mansion on sand, you got to have a good foundation.

I was ready to do the vac process on both my fly bridge and cockpit but both were too far gone and the curse of balsa was present so when I peeped inside, I had hit the domino and they just kept falling. I have some hollow sounds on the bow left but I am hopeful I might get by with drying and injecting.

[osirissail]

Mule has pretty much described the core problem fixes - but - all the resins and epoxy are very much intolerant of any water while they are uncured. So getting a dry core, I have found is quite difficult and time consuming. I ended up just using a skill saw and cutting out bad deck sections then removing the wet and/or rotten coring. Then I used kledgecell (or other version of expanded foam sheets) to replace the rotten end-core balsa. Then replaced the deck pieces and fiberglassed them back together.
- - The foam sheets come in many grades of density so you can get some for flotation purposes or high density for structural support repairs. Be sure to use the same sort of resin as the deck is made of to join everything back together.
- - Assuming no serious coring problems on the deck then do as was suggested taking out all the screws (some teak decking is glued down rather than screwed). Drill out any broken or ones that refuse to come out. Do not leave any behind. Clean and sand the deck and then use the same resin (polyester) as the deck was made from along with cloth or solid phenolic microspheres to fill all the hundreds of screw holes. Do not use epoxy to fill the holes as the shrinkage and expansion differences between polyester resin and epoxy is too great and it is highly likely the epoxy filled holes with open up and allow water leakage.
- - All of this process is hugely time consuming and lots of labor. You can use two part marine deck paint to cover the newly repaired decks or use paint and the vinyl matting material to make a very good looking deck. In Florida where I did some of these types of deck repairs the whole job - removing the teak to finished new deck took a couple of months and cost from $20K to $30K. So whatever "grunt" work you can do the better and lower the cost.
- - If you are really well off you can get the new repaired deck gelcoated again but normally the newly repaired deck is just painted. The anti-skid pattern is difficult of not impossible to get right which is where the glued on vinyl is a great solution.

[hanschristian38]

I use a product call an X_Out for removing screws where the heads are damaged. Similar to this product:
Grabit-Pro | Alden

[Mike Vogdes]

After you strip off all the teak and repair the sub deck material, reglass with epoxy and cloth, fair the surface. THEN... a very good coating for your new sound deck is Rhino Liner. Thats right, the same stuff they spray on pickup truck beds. Comes in many colors and is indestructible.

[captainKJ]

Originally Posted by JayCall

In a professional mag I get, Professional Boat Builder, I just read a piece on a company that makes complete teak replacement decks, won't leak and last a long time. You remove the old, prepare the surface. You then make a template and they make the deck and ship it to you for install. The teak is mounted on a scrim whcih you install. No joints, screws, nails, etc. It was fairly expensive, but seemed like a reasonably permanent solution that maintained the beauty if a teak deck. If anyone is interested, I can look up the article and put a cite to it here.

I used this on my friends boat,,, first stripped off old teak deck and made templates,,, took off the plywood and rebuilt,,,,used new marine plywood, west system including highbuild,,, then epoxied new teak decking,,, NO LEAKS IN OVER 5 YEARS

many mega yachts are using this same system

[akio.kanemoto]

Probably a bit late... but, I just did this in my cockpit.

Fake teak is Evil.

Teak is evil as well, but not as Evil.

I had a layer of BOTH... first was the original ply + glass floor + non-slip paint (sand?). Then the PO obviously thought it wasn't sexy enough.. so got it covered with teak... which probably started to leak and he then put the fake teak layer on top of that hoping that it would stop the leaking.

Fake teak has voids/ridges underneath to help bonding... which hold water. Real teak has screw holes.. which if not sealed 100% perfectly let in that standing water.

So all in all, the wood underneath was not looking very good... cracks when viewed from underneath + mushy feel.

Removal was a real nasty job. Fake teak does not want to come up easily... A heat gun? Which was my original thought "yep, I'll just spend 20 minutes with the heat gun and that will be up easily....."... err.. NO. Think "hammer + chisel + hard labour"....

Then there's the glue residue. Many joyful hours with a belt sander and grinder.

Then there's the teak...

In my case, the wood itself was actually in perfectly good shape in almost all places. So I ripped out anything that wasn't bonded perfectly or looked bad, and ripped out all of the caulking and screwheads with a grinder.

Then filled the dips, holes etc with a mix of West System 411 + 403 to make fair again, filleted all sole/wall edges/corners generously, then while still wet, applied two layers of 750gsm triaxial cloth (thick!) overlapping 10cm up all 4 sides/walls as well, then wet out with epoxy.

Floor is now much stronger and will never leak again.

Next, fair with the fairing compound of your choice (eg 410 microlite), then paint normally, then Kiwigrip (or Don't Slip, depending on where you buy it - it's the same stuff).

Took me about 2 full days from beginning to finish the triaxial cloth wet-out stage (just before fairing). Total surface area was about 2.5m2.

If you're doing your entire deck, I would rip out all the teak as well though and hope you don't have any core issues. Once you have the teak off, the glassing etc is actually very quick. If you use ~750gsm glass though, make sure you buy a LOT of epoxy though! It will drink epoxy like there's no tomorrow.

[captain465]

You should never say "never".

[akio.kanemoto]

Originally Posted by captain465

You should never say "never".

Very good point... Bad Karma...

I will rephrase:

"Should hopefully not leak again for many years to come"

[shrimp]

Dam! wrote out this long question hit the wrong button and now I have to start again.OK we are replacing our old Teak deck and have ripped up most of it, only to find Arrrrg...core problem up front. The glass deck is sandwich construction with a ply inner. It appears that sometime ago there has been some repair work undertaken on the port side.here the deck is laid straight on to a newer glass matt and is very difficult to remove, whist on the starboard side of the boat the deck is coming up with alarming ease.There boat does not leak.(yet) My question is not having any experience in lifting decks can I expect the damaged section of the deck to come away easly from the ply, or will it be a fight to the bitter end? Also given that this at present appears to be a localised problem are there other effective remedies such as injecting resin etc? By the way we have decided to replace the old decks with yet more Teak as posted by CaptainKJ & Jaycall. This sytem was about 50% cheaper than similar quotes we received for traditional Teak installation.The deal is we do the prep work and the company is doing the install.Finger crossed.

[Wolfy]

I am considering purchase of a 1986 CT 56, she's been neglected and the Teak decks are as bad as it get's. Water ingress is evident in several places inside......my question is...Does any one know if the deck on the CT 56 has a Balsa core (sandwich) which could be saturated or if the deck is all fiberglass??
Should I walk away.....?
Thanks for your responses in advance.
Wolfy

[Thorin]

Hey this might be a crazy idea and I don't know what the manufacturer would say, but why not spray the top of you deck with the same material they use for spray in truck box liners? The stuff is heavy at a 1/4" thick it can add over 100 lbs to a truck (but you would never need to go that thick on a boat!). You would have to make sure the deck was dry (the slightest amount of moisture will react with the isocyanid [not sure if I spelt that right "the catalyst"] and cause blisters. The stuff wouldn't ever come off your deck for love, money, or cheap booze. And you could probably take a torpedo and still have a perfect deck after. Everything but rock reacts to UV but it's the most resistant thing I have ever seen.

Just a crazy thought.