Help! Idiot PO used silicone deck sealer on my teak!

Jul 2, 2018
48
Catalina 22 Acton Lake, OH
I am refinishing my Catalina 22's teak. I got it all sanded and beautiful, cleaned with denatured alcohol per Mas epoxy instructions. This isn't my first rodeo with epoxy and wood. I do a lot of epoxy work, always with excellent results until now. I brushed out the crib boards with the first coat. Looked fine for about 10 minutes, then it began to crawl back into huge fisheyes. It appears to be silicone contamination. All I can figure is that the idiot I bought the boat from was using silicone deck sealer on the wood!

Has anybody else encountered this problem? If so how did you deal with it?
 

SG

.
Feb 11, 2017
1,670
J/Boat J/160 Annapolis
Can't you remove the remaining silicone with mineral spirits, then clean it with some mild household soap?

I assume it's just "lingering".
 
Jul 2, 2018
48
Catalina 22 Acton Lake, OH
I could always put teak oil on it, but teak oil doesn't stop it from cracking and rotting from underneath. The idea was to seal up the already 33-years-in-the-sun wood to make it last longer with less maintenance. (and it looks good too!)
 
Jul 2, 2018
48
Catalina 22 Acton Lake, OH
Silicone contamination is nearly impossible to remove from wood. It's nearly impossible to remove from gelcoat too. I've already sanded these boards thoroughly and cleaned them, but the silicone apparently runs deep. From what I've been reading, maybe xylene will work. Some say just sand off to bare wood and coat with shellac (that can seal in the silicone), then epoxy. I'm going to call Mas tomorrow to get an answer from somebody who knows, whether I can epoxy over shellac. Anyway, it's really frustrating because I was finally ready to finish the wood, but no...
 

SG

.
Feb 11, 2017
1,670
J/Boat J/160 Annapolis
The epoxy will have to be protected from UV degradation?
 

Dan_Y

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Oct 13, 2008
514
Hunter 36 Hampton
About 35 years ago when I painted cars with lacquer paint, if fish eyes appeared, we would put a squirt of fisheye remover in the paint gun cup. It actually looked like liquid silicone, but I don’t know what it was. It worked pretty well, but you had to get the remover in the paint and apply another coat fast, otherwise the fisheyes showed and you had to let it dry and sand them out.

In the shop we always suspected it was silicone in the dust that would settle on the horizontal panels from buffing and detailing. The fisheyes would appear even though you wiped the panels. Not so much on vertical panels. In those days, small jobs were painted in the stall if the paint booth was occupied...ugh...
 
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Dec 28, 2015
1,837
Laser, Hunter H30 Cherubini Tacoma
The epoxy is really going to suck when it fails and you have to sand it off. I’d consider a different material.
 
Jul 2, 2018
48
Catalina 22 Acton Lake, OH
The epoxy will have to be protected from UV degradation?
Yes, it gets several coats of marine varnish. The good stuff, not Minwax Spar. I use Pettit's Captain's Varnish. This is a common technique in modern wooden boat building. The epoxy consolidates and protects the wood, the varnish protects the epoxy. I have a rowing wherry I built that has some deck sections of Okume plywood and mahogany gunwales finished this way. They are 8 years old and still look beautiful. I would expect that if it sat out in the sun all summer, it would be due for a light sanding and a fresh coat of varnish.
 
Jul 2, 2018
48
Catalina 22 Acton Lake, OH
The horror... you'll notice the fish eyes don't form on the Osage Orange that I used to repair the edges of the companionway trims. That indicates to me that the teak was not contaminated in my shop.
20190602_170412.jpg

20190602_170250.jpg
 
Jul 2, 2018
48
Catalina 22 Acton Lake, OH
So the long and the short of it, after sanding all the finish back off, and trying a variety of solvents, test pieces were still curdling the epoxy. I spoke to Mas tech guys and they suggested sanding with 60 grit and slapping on the epoxy. This did work on everything but the crib boards, the weatherboard, and the hand hold. I ended up using totalboat teak sealer on those. The rest got 3 coats epoxy and 3 coats of varnish. (Photo is not of the final coat, just showing that it wasn't crawling back anymore)
20190616_122343.jpg
 
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