Teak Deck installation

                                                      Teak Deck Installation

After the sub deck was finished and before the teak deck was installed all holes in the deck were filled with 2 component epoxy filler .

Afterwards the complete deck was rolled in a thin layer of epoxy to make sure that there were no gaps between the different installed area’s where teak will be glued on, for example between the deck house and the sub deck..

After the curing time the complete deck was lightly sanded to create a good surface for bonding the teak planks onto the deck with bedding compound.

The first teak planks to be installed are the ones onto the side of the boat longer pieces for the straight side and shorter pieces were cut to seize for mainly the bow. Keeping in mind that portside and starboard side should looks the same, planks were shaped in the same length from a wider plank and installed without tension.

The planks were temperately screwed down into position and shaped with the sides of the boat. The planks of the complete bow were kept wider than actually required this gives the opportunity to shape them with the side of the bow as well as after final installation to make them the correct width with a router following the side and removing wood on the inside of the plank till  the sub deck, groove of the teak plank will be discussed in a later stage.  Next picture shows the left side of the bow shaped while the right side is still needs to be shaped. The way the teak pank and the bow are shaped is that a falt almost vertical surface is created to place in alater stage a teak plank for side protection.

When all was correct the side planks were cleaned-degreased coated with a primer and glued down with Sika flex bedding compound. I have used Sikaflex and have followed the exact procedures as can be found on their web side, there are of course other bedding compounds and caulking systems on the market which are suitable as well.

The next step was to clean the excess of bedding compound at the inside of the planks and than figuring out the layout of the new teak deck onto the sub deck, this takes time to came up with an acceptable layout, by placing the planks loose onto the deck. I have tried to follow the original lines of the teak deck and this cannot always be followed due to the wider teak planks which are now on the marked 48 mm almost 2``.

When the layout was decided the planks were cut to the correct length and temperately mounted down with block of wood  and clamps. I made small blocks of wood which were screwed down into the deck beams holding the teak planks in place during the dry fitting and during the actual gluing down onto the deck.
The holes were filed with bedding compound.

As can be seen from the nextt picture due to the groove in the teak plank it is possible to push the plank against the next plank and at the same time holding it down into position this methos was mainly used for the side panks since they are placed under a little tension to able to following the curve of the boat.

The next step was how to finish the teak against the deck house, original built the teak deck was installed and during a later stage the deck house was placed on top of the teak deck. Since I changed the construction the deck house runs now completely till the sub deck the teak will be placed against the deck house. There are two solutions one is to continue from the outside to the inside and make the last teak plank finish against the deck house and make it fit or place a teak plank from the same width against the deck house and fit the plank next to this plank and shape it in position. This is in my opinion the best and most nice way to do it. Although the teak experts will tell us to start installing the teak deck at the deck house and finish at the side it is the first time I  installed a teak deck and I thought this was the best and easiest way to do it.

The next step was to shape the finishing planks in place bear in mind that I made the mistake to shape a long plank. When a long plank is bend after it is shaped it can not bend well  and start to twist which will result that it will not fit properly, therefore I made sure that the finidhing plank was fitted with the minimum tension in place. This took a lot of measurements and time for fitting and shaping. It is important that I took the time to do this since I otherwise might have ended up with wider grooves between the planks which will not look nice after the deck is caulked and sanded.

When the planks were shaped to my satisfaction they were glued in place with bedding compound clamped where required and hold in position with wooden blocks. I noticed that it is important to have no gap between the planks during gluing down otherwise the bedding compound will fill up the groove between the planks and it is a lot of work removing it in a later stage with the chance of damaging the teak planks. Planks were hold also into position and pushed into the bedding compound with sand bags. No more than two maximum 3 planks were glued down at the same time. First were the two sides finished onto the sub deck.

Next part to be glued in place was the stern deck which was done in two times since it were short plank without any tension to be able to keep into position, also here were block sued and sand bags.

The stern was done after the sides were finished to get a good contact between the side planks and to make sure that the caulking lines would be followed. If one starts firts with the stern deck it will be difficult to match the side decks a small change in the angle between the stern planks and the side deck will result in a tapered gap between the stern deck and the side decks creating a strange caulking line. Therefore I started with the side decks.

Than came the deck of the bow, actually it was a bit easier since the planks can be glued down without any tension compared to some tension in the teak planks of the sides. First thing which was done was to decide the centerline of the deck and the width of the king plank . The sides planks in place more or less decide the layout of the teak planks from the bow deck, angle where the side planks come onto the bow deck. It was than installing one plank at the time port side starboard side and measuring their end position against the side plank to make sure that from the centerline the planks on both sides end up on the same position, If this is not done correctly the planks which end up against the king plank left and right will not match up which will be visible and will not look nice. In my case the planks almost lined up correctly left and right of the king plank with only a few mm difference.

The following step was to glue the teak planks down in position same plan was followed few planks ports side few planks starboard side hold in position by wooden blocks screwed into the deck beams and hold down by sand bags.

When the complete deck was glued down and time for curing the bedding compound was taken in consideration the grooves between the planks were cleaned The groove between the side plank and the teaks panks ending at the side plank were made with a router smaller than the width of the actual groove, a 4 mm router was used for a 6 mm groove. The router followed the side of the ship so creating a groove in line with the side of the ship. A 4 mm router was used this gives some flexibility with cleaning the extra bedding compund between the planks without having the chance to damaging the wood. Only disadvantage is that twice the router needs to be adjusted for the correct width of the groove which is eventually 6 mm.

Another method was also used for cleaning the grooves from the excess of bedding compound and creating the correct width of the groove where required, for example the shaped planks. A straight router was mounted on a base plate with two half round bolts which were out of line with the actual tool bid the two half round bolts gave the opportunity to guide the router through the grooves without removing any wood just removing the excess of the bedding compound while following the groove to be cleaned.

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Since there were some of the grooves not pre-cut the same principle was used for cutting a new groove between the planks. It was made sure that one of the two planks has the original groove which is a part of the plank for guidance of cutting the correct width of the required groove between the two planks. The following picture shows a partly cut groove between two planks as can be seen the original groove is on the plank placed against the deck house which was followed with the router to create the complete groove between the planks.

When all grooves were cleaned and cut were required the complete deck was vacuumed and grooves checked for their cleanliness, it showed that also that the new teak deck was almost the same as the original installed teak deck.

When all the grooves were degreases and prepared for the deck caulking in one day the complete deck was caulked, bearing in mind to push the caulking into the grooves with a flat knife and leaving an excess of caulking sticking above the planks. Other method is to tape next to each groove before the caulking is applied which in my opinion creates a lot of extra work especially since the complete teak deck needs to be sanded and the excessive caulking will be sanded away. It was made sure that where grooves ended against the hull that tape was placed to prevent caulking running out between the grooves.

A finished deck with caulking does not look very appealing but when sanded it will look great in my opinion.

After a period of two weeks caulking needed to be placed between the teak deck and the deck house although enough bedding compound was used when installing the teak planks against the deck housebedding compound was pushed out between the teak planks and the deck house. An extra filler needed to be placed between those two surfaces in my opinion. Before this filler could be placed the teak planks next to the deck house needed to be sanded when this was done all was degreased and tape was placed for applying the caulking. Directly after the caulking was finished the tape was removed and the caulking left to dry.

The aft deck was completely sanded for the installation of new window frames the same was done with the bow deck but only in the position of the new window frame. During this sanding it showed that a few air bubbles were entrapped into the caulking resulting into holes these holes were cut out degreased and filled again with caulking, in this case tape was used to make sure that no caulking would end up onto the sanded deck. Sanding again caulking from the teak planks might result inlower spots on the teak deck which can result in places were water will collect.

The old window frame was placed onto the teak deck of the bow and the good part was that it fitted without any major gaps, only thing left is now to sand completely the teak deck but that will be done in later stage since more work needs to be done at the deck house, new window frames of the bow and stern windows, which will be the next blog.