While I know that all of you have been on the edges of your seats for months awaiting an update to the Great Teak Debacle of 2009 there’s not been a lot to update. Since the last update Chris has been working on the detail sanding while I deal with more prosaic tasks like replacing a head, repairing a burned out 50 Amp shore power connector and cord, and other maintenance tasks his teak work has freed me up for.
Funny, but he didn’t want to switch jobs with me yesterday when I was replacing another one of these stupid Jabsco toilets (more on that crappy job in another post…the job was OK but the head is annoying!); I would have been more than happy to offer him my rubber gloves and do some sanding.
“Detail Sanding” mostly means going around either by hand with a piece of sandpaper or with a small power tool and finding all the extra caulk we’ve not sanded off and getting rid of it. There was actually a lot – all the places the big power tools couldn’t get to; edges around things, the edge of the teak areas, and other tight places.
The detail sanding is basically done (though I anticipate finding “misses” regularly for the next year). We have two final steps before the project is essentially complete. I say essentially because we left a few lazarettes (hatch covers) completely undone because they have a lot of detail work, and they can be taken off the boat for the winter and done on my work bench at home.
The first big task is the teak bungs. These are the little round wooden plugs that fit into the screw holes in the deck where the screws that hold the deck on are. For our first attempt, I measured some of the open bung holes with a micrometer and they seemed to be about 3/8″ inches, which is a standard size you can buy at most local marine retailers in the United States. Easy to find and convenient. Hah! I estimate we have a little more than 100 bungs to replace.
About is the key word in that last paragraph, after Chris put a few in we noticed that while they were snug going in they were not snug enough and there were still hair line gaps around them. That they went in by hand and without a mallet should have been a tip off: clearly 3/8″ is too small. Given the European construction of Evenstar my thought was they were either metric, or some odd custom size. To be safe and not waste a lot of time with bung making tools or hunting down metric bungs I ordered a set of bungs from Hallberg-Rassy; these should fit. We don’t lose any time because I’m taking the boat on vacation next week anyway. 200 of the bungs and screws that Hallberg-Rassy uses to build their boats will hopefully be sitting on my porch when I get back.
The process is straightforward, if time consuming (isn’t this whole project?). For holes where the head of the screw is deep enough a quick cleaning out of the hole for dust and crud, a dab of varnish in the hole to hold the bung plug, tap in the plug and let it dry. Then you put a chisel on the edge of the bung and give it a little tap to pop the part that is sticking above the deck off, and you sand it a little.
Unfortunately more than a few of the holes are not deep enough to hold the bung. For those we have to back the screw out and take a rotary tool to the hole to countersink it a bit more. Dig it out if you will so it is deep enough to shove the bung into it and hold it there. Then a screw is reinserted with some sort of sealant (to be determined) on it, and the process continues as above.
The final task which will put an end to the job is fixing all the skips, misses and screwups. Cut out the new, badly installed caulk then re-prep the grooves. Mask it all carefuly and refill the gaps and sand it down.
The end is in sight though, and the decks are looking really, really nice even now.
