Teak Veneer for Repairs?

[Tspringer]

More questions on our refit....


I have several areas in the boat where the teak is badly stained and a couple of places where the teak veneer is peeled away and destroyed including one 1' x 3' section on a hanging locker in the master cabin.

I have been looking at teak veneer sold here:

Paper-Backed Teak Veneer Flat Cut 4' x 8' now available at VeneerSupplies.com

It seems I could score the damaged areas with an exacto knife, peel away the veneer, gently sand and prep the area, cut a new piece of veneer to match and then glue it down with contact cement. Then re-varnish the area.

Has anyone done this? Any tips or hints or comments?

I have also thought about possibly gluing this kind of teak veneer on top of some of the white Formica in the heads I hate so much!


Thanks!

Terry

[barnakiel]

Can be done. Just make sure you use a glue that does not leave marks. If you use epoxy then you have to do a VERY clean job - the epoxy does discolour (darkens) over time, even under layers of varnish.

I would not, repeat not, use veneer in the heads - the Formica is way easier to clean. You will hate the veneer after a while.

[Cheechako]

ditto on not putting the veneer in the head. I have used the teak paperbacked veneer years ago to make a table top. It worked out OK, but was a lot more work than had I just payed the fee for the 3/4 teak ply. I'm not sure you will get lucky enough to have the new veneer match the thickness of the piece you are stripping off. Would it be possible to just put the new veneer on the whole cabinet face over the old? (saturate the old with epoxy or etc)

[Stevens 47]

Terry I think that you will find that the veneer plywood in the damaged section could be delaminating. Our boats where built with a structural 1/2 marine quality plywood with a 3 ply teak veneered panel glued on top. The problem is that the 3 ply seams not to be marine grade, I can basically peel the 3 plys apart by hand. You may have a hard time just getting the veneer of and in fact may end up removing the top ply layer. I suspect that you will not be happy with the end product, the repair will look just like that. It may be less noticeable if you take a laminate trimmer and remove the section then glue in a marine grade 3 ply veneered panel. If you do use a veneer make sure you use a glue that solvents used in the finish will not attack the glue. The veneer is so thin that teak cleaners can go thru and cause the glue to be compromised. Also you should do a test to make sure the glue does not cause a reaction to finish face of the veneer.

The head. What a head ache. Allot of the Stevens Formica heads are cracking and delaminating, maybe yours is OK. I do not know of a glue that will stick to it. What I am doing in mine is removing all of the Formica then fairing the surfaces and painting with LP. This is of course very labor intensive and a really dirty job. You may want to consider using a stable laminate. Formica seems to not do well with expansions and contractions, There are some FRP panel out there that are very stable and easy to work with.

[Tspringer]

The formica in my heads is not horrid, there are a couple of minor cracks but overall its holding up well.

But it is BUTT UGLY!

I am looking for ways to cosmetically upgrade the heads... see my other post.

As for the veneer, the area where I need the most repair is on the aft cabin hanging locker. The very thin top layer veneer was damaged when one of my kids gouged it while playing and the veneer peeled away. The sub surface is ok, but the top layer veneer peeled away in several strips.

The other areas where the veneer has been stained dark due to various leaking I hope to be able to bleach it, stain it and get it to match when I tackle varnishing the areas.

I had hoped to use some veneer in the heads on certain areas, but I guess I will seek other solutions.


Terry

[Cheechako]

Yea those dark stains are very hard to improve. I've never been successful at doing it. If you strip the finish and try to bleach (even if the bleach works... which it doesnt seem to very well) you than have an area that wont match the rest of the wood that has finish on it. You can try to strip the whole panel, but I've just never found anything that will bleach that black out of the teak... let me know if you have success!