But I did get over there to work on the Teak a bit today.
More tomorrow – it’s actually warm here, I wish we were ready to do some caulking.
There are two sorts of grooves in the teak – shallow more ornamental ones, and deep ones that run all the way to the deck and run between two planks of teak. The shallow ones presumably are to add more no skid capability, but they only run a few millimeters deep.
The shallow ones are easy compared to the deep ones, almost fun. They are generally straight, and the Fein Mulitmaster with the teak caulk blade skims over 90% of the caulk out of them in seconds. The remainder takes a mix of running the Multimaster over it a few more times, then WAY more time with little picks and chisels staring at the lines up close picking out the caulk until your eyes cross and your hands cramp up.
The deep ones are an unholy b***h to clear out more often than not. First of all they are three times the depth of the decorative ones, so there is way more caulk to get out. It’s deep enough so the Multimaster blade sometimes gets bound up in it. It is harder to GET it all out, and the bottom of the groove is boat – some sort of epoxy glue/sealant than holds the teak to the deck, not teak. So the caulk sticks better. And you can dig up the underlying gelcoat if you’re not careful. And there are little staple like things in the groves to catch (and dull) the blade. More importantly, the DEEP structural grooves are often not straight at all, or form funny angles with other pieces of teak. For curved grooves you can not even use the Multimaster, you’re going in by hand.
So being the, er, nice guy that I am I go join my classmate that I talked in to helping me with this job. He’s working one side of the boat removing deck hardware and playing with picks, so I grab the Multimaster and start buzzing out teak on the other side of the deck. Only as I was finishing did it occur to me that he was probably thinking “when I finish doing all this crappy, curved, deep caulk at least I have a nice big section of the deck over there to do which should be a nice break”. Ooops.
Fortunately he’s a good sport, and of course with a 53 foot boat with a 16’beam entirely covered with teak there really are plenty of wide, straight shallow grooves for everybody to do.
If you ask me really nicely I might even let you do some of them.
