Team Teak!!

The Admiral busy squishing the air out of a seam of caulk.

The family that “Teaks” together stays together. I suppose.

When we lost all my help for this project, my wife and I decided that I needed all the help I can get. Maybe it was something about me being unbearably grumpy to be around that inspired her, however whatever the reason I’ll take the help.

So this weekend the whole family was on the boat working the teak, I was sanding and caulking with my wife while the kids took picks and cleaned out some grooves. Everyone was a good sport about it.

Some observations:

• I can not believe that professionals waste half the caulk that we seem to. Look at that picture above – to squish the air out of the seam and make sure it is full you have to put a lot of caulk in the seam to start, then squish it down and sand it all off after it cures. At around $11.00 per tube, I’d rather not sand half of it off but that seems to be the drill.
• I do not think it is safe to actually bathe in acetone, but short of full body immersion I have no idea how all this caulk will come off. The two ways I know to get it off are with acetone, or with a belt sander. I’m not sure which grit is best to use on my arms.
• The creatures that died in La Brea tar pits got off easy. While the caulk is as nasty as tar in some ways, I suspect that if it did not kill those woolly mammoths outright they’d still be trying to get this crap out of their fur.
• There has to be a better way to cut the tips on the caulk tubes, I think I am not doing something right. Caulk comes out the back of the tubes, I suspect there is too much pressure because my hole is too small, yet a bigger hole puts out too much caulk.
• If I was using a manual caulk gun as has been suggested my right arm would look like Popeye’s by the end of this project.
• While working under the shrink wrap is clearly the way to go, there are problems I had not anticipated – mostly to do with lack of head room. I do not contort well to get to tricky spots. This is even more fun when failure to move in a coordinated fashion (a frequent problem of mine) is penalized by a fall into the sticky mess I just caulked.

For now we are using a Ryobi cordless caulking gun. It works well, however there are a few issues. With the battery it gets heavy and awkward. The button is placed where you have to reach up for it, my finger slips off. And most importantly if the caulk blows out the back of the tube the caulk squishes up into the ratcheting mechanism – if the caulk is allowed to cure up there then you might as well throw away a $40.00 caulking gun. Last year I destroyed two this way when I was doing the “Proof of Concept” for this whole project.

In my shed is a compressor and some pneumatic caulk guns waiting to be tested. Based on the high mortality rate of the Ryobi’s I ordered five pnematic guns (hey, they were only $9.99 at Harbor Freight) – looking at them I doubt I will go through that many. There aren’t as many moving parts and the teak isn’t likely to get sucked back into the gun when air is coming out of it at 90 psi. The guns are smaller and lighter, but DO require a hose. That might be awkward – if they work out, they should be easier. However I am having visions of dragging the hose across sticky teak caulk and turning the entire boat into a horrendous mess.