I'm Giving Up Boating

[Roger Long]

For August anyway.

The boys are busy with the summer stuff that piles up as school looms and the long put off task of refinishing my teak trim can most easily be done in the marina slip. We may get in a couple of daysails and a short cruise but I'm "turning to with a will" as they say in those books about the British Navy in the age of sail.

Long time readers may remember that the launch of the Yawldory and Barbara's boat delayed my departure for Canada last year.

http://forums.sbo.sailboatowners.com/showthread.php?t=130975&#post824769

http://forums.sbo.sailboatowners.com/showthread.php?t=131585&#post829779

http://forums.sbo.sailboatowners.com/showthread.php?t=134234&#post853029

In anticipation, I expected a few weeks of working on projects like the trim but all sorts of unexpected things elsewhere in the boat took up the time and I started out with the teak in pretty sad shape. A year of further unbroken exposure to the elements, equal to three normal years for a typical Maine boat, have brought things to a pretty desperate state.

A few years ago, I drank the Bristol Finish Kool Aid. I love how tough and durable the stuff is but it is so miserable, unpredictable, and difficult to work with that I can't believe it stays on the market. I have a lot on hand though (through some poor planning) and it's a major project to strip everything down and try to build up the required 6-8 coats of regular varnish.

I got some good news today though. One of the few good things about Bristol Finish is that it can be patched as the two part system will bond to itself. The paint and varnish expert at Hamilton Marine recommended the old standby, Captain's Varnish, for someone in my situation. He called the company and they said it will go over the Bristol Finish. Rather than heat gunning and scraping everything back to bare wood therefore, I'm going to try scraping and sanding just the worn and chipped spots, and building back up with Bristol Finish without worrying too much about how it looks. I'll then sand it all level and smooth and put on a coat or two of Captain's Varnish. The BF will provide a very solid and durable substrate and the CF, which has great UV resistance, should protect it in a way that I can maintain more easily.

Bear in mind that I'm not trying for anything more than passing the straight face test. If it looks good to someone taking a quick glance boarding while a girl in a skimpy bikini is sunbathing on the bow, I'll be happy.

I'll post pictures if it turns out particularly good or bad and especially if that girl in the bikini shows up but this thread is not intended to be a teak refinishing tutorial.

 

[MSter]

Roger,
A tutorial on teak re-finishing would be welcomed ! Especially from you.
Mster

 

[Roger Long]

A tutorial on teak re-finishing would be welcomed ! Especially from you.

If you saw Strider up close, you wouldn't ask me. See my opening post:

http://forums.sbo.sailboatowners.com/showthread.php?t=128171

I had to give up on the idea of patching the Bristol Finish and varnishing over. By the time I had dug out all the places chips and cracks had let moisture under the BF, it would have taken more time to try and patch it back level than to just strip and start over. I did that all day and I feel like I was run over by a truck. This kind of thing is hard for someone with carpal tunnel on top of other old wrist injuries. All the twisting and contortions gave my back and shoulders a real workout.

After consultation with Milt at Hamilton Marine, I'm going to use up the Bristol Finish I have on hand and plan to varnish over it after it ages. He felt that I should let the bare teak sit for a couple days to let any chemicals from the BF air out after using the heat gun to remove the old stuff in case it caused problems for the Captain's Varnish. This great varnishing weather will be gone by then. It's very unlikely that those chemicals would cause problems for the BF and it will make a nice hard substrate for the varnish on the high wear coamings.

The Bristol Finish will probably look like the worst varnish job in the world until I get some down time well down the waterway to sand it flat and put on the varnish. However, I did discover a trick that seems to make the BF work a lot better. People in Florida seem to love it and everyone else hates it so it may like heat. I tried warming up the cup of mixed BF with the heat gun before finishing up the trim pieces I was doing in the basement and it went on and smoothed out much better than it ever has before.

The latest word, rumor, or guess; though is that BF will never come back on the market. That would be my luck just as I'm learning how to use it.

Almost nothing will keep it from running though. I think you could get runs doing a table top. The only thing I ever finished with it that didn't have runs was the wood pad for the cabin stove pipe which I did this way:

http://www.cruisingonstrider.us/videos/BristolFinish.wmv