Teak Veneer Losing Its Grain

[Sail Scituate]

Hello,

I just began some minor refinishing work on the 1978 CD 25 I bought at the end of last season. The forward bulkheads are in good shape, but the color has grown very dark with age. I was hoping to lighten them via bleaching with oxalic acid (per Don Casey). My first step was to remove a layer of varnish (complete with heavy brush marks) using CitriStrip. The varnish peeled off with no problem whatsoever. However, I noticed on one side that the grain of the veneer looks like it's disappearing. Has anyone had a similar experience?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts/suggestions.

[Steve Laume]

Sounds like the guy with the heavy brush strokes might have gone a bit hard with the sandpaper too.

Go easy and stay with 220 grit. Be really careful around the areas that are losing grain, Steve.

[Jim Davis]

On '75 CD25s it wasn't veneer, but something similar to formica. In this case the "grain" is surface only. Once you sand the surface off it is really gone. If you are sanding an actual veneer you don't have a lot of wood to play with. In this case the grain direction will change when you get to the base wood .

[jbenagh]

If it turns out the teak veneer is either worn through or non-existent, I offer two options:

If you do want the genuine teak look (very attractive IMHO), you can buy teak veneer sheets. They are very thin -- 10 or 22mil, but about the same thickness as teak faced plywood. You attach it with heat-activated glue, kind of like an iron on. This would be ~$90 to do the salon bulkhead, plus varnish.

My 25 had the fake veneer and I painted it white, Herreshoff-style. It really brightened up the cabin. Good paint and primer is not cheap, so this is not slam-dunk cheaper.

Jeff

[Sail Scituate]

First and foremost, thanks for the replies, it was my first post
and I was hoping I wouldn't sound too clueless.

Jim and jbenagh, I think my 25 has the same formica style veneer. The grain began disappearing before I did any sanding. The CitriStrip did a great job loosening the varnish, I just didn't count on the grain coming off with it. Kind of torn in terms of going with new veneer or the Herreshoff white interior. Given that I was trying to lighten the wood to brighten the cabin, perhaps going with the white makes more sense. I am planning to install a teak and holly cabin sole, so that will help make up for covering up the "teak" bulkheads.

Thanks again.

[Jim Davis]

My wife has painted on both of the 25s we have had. I would suggest using a satin finish paint. Gloss can be too harsh to look at and the satin is pleasing to the eye. It also cleans well and because it isn't gloss more forgiving to put on. You might want to also consider getting rid of the Baby Blue in the cabin. This also makes the boat look bigger. Brightside does a good job, just prep the surface well and prime.

[Gary H]

I have read that a good quality exterior house paint is suitable for cabin walls and headliners. I was planning on using such a paint this spring - does anyone have any experience with this?

[Paul D.]

I may get lambasted here, but I once painted the topsides of a wooden Atkins Ingrid with Latex house paint. (Hey, I was just volunteer crew and doing what I was told!) We sailed her from New Zealand to Australia. She spent a season on the Queensland coast and then sailed back to Auckland. When I visited her three years later she still looked pretty good.

So I would feel fine using exterior house paint below if I needed. I would try to use an alkyd enamel however. May be hard to find in a satin but a good paint store would probably have some options.

[Oswego John]

Thanks Paul, for breaking the ice. It's better that you get lambasted than me. But, nevertheless, here's my two cents.

Here is a hypothetical question for the readers. To a certain lucky few of them, the answer is a fact of life. They know who they are. All the rest of you, close your eyes and dream.

Suppose that you had a nice home on a lake or on a body of salt water with frontage. Twenty paces from your front door was a ramp which led down to a float to which your CD was tied.

To make this supposition work, you have to agree that both your home and your boat were subject to the same conditions no matter what. It made no difference whether the sun was out or it was pouring rain, whether it was 40° F or 90°F, wind was gale force or a zephyr. Whatever affected the house, affected your CD. This even allows for wintertime for some of the dreamers.

The question that I am wondering about is, what paint do you use to paint your house? I hardly believe that many of you (perhaps someone or a few super dedicated mariners) paint your house with Awlgrip. Hey, I'm not knocking Awlgrip in the slightest, it's great stuff. $$$

I wonder how many of you would have teak trim on your dream home? If anyone, would you prime and paint the teak? Maybe some of you would sand and varnish the teak with the brand of varnish that 1 out of 10 know how to pronounce its name properly.

I have a sneaky suspicion that some, make that many, of you would treat your dream home like the unwelcome brother-in-law when compared to your CD. The dream home is only wood and nails with some tarpaper on the roof. We are now talking about our, ahem, CAPE DORY.

To get back to reality, I guess that it might have been in 1992 or '93,
I wondered about paint. If I sprayed someone else's boat, I used whatever paint they called for. So I experimented with my own boat, a Ty. I went down to a local hardware store and bought a gallon of Benjamin Moore high gloss alkyd exterior paint. Usually high gloss is white and used as trim paint. I had color added and had it shaken well. That paint is still on my hull, although it is now in fair to poor condition from lack of covering the hull during severe winters.

To be fair, the hull wouldn't compare anywhere near an Awlgrip finish. It wouldn't pass a one foot away inspection. It would breeze through with a ten foot test and would rate high at five foot. I could see my face in the finish, although not like Awlgrip's mirror finish. I might add that at that time, best that I can recollect, Benjamin Moore sold at about $22 a gallon.

My $.02. Keep dreaming.
O J

[Duncan]

I have read that a good quality exterior house paint is suitable for cabin walls and headliners. I was planning on using such a paint this spring - does anyone have any experience with this?

After seeing complaints about both Bilgekote and Brightsides, I bought some Behr heavy duty bathroom and laundry paint. It is rated to be very resistant to both mildew and abrasion.

I haven't applied it yet, but I felt pretty comfortable making this choice. I think that mass market products like this are often good value/high quality, because of the volume sold.

[marka]

about 8 or 9 years ago i painted the headliner on our '27 with rustoleum enamel. it goes on like glue, is cost effective and has held up awesome.