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Depends on the condition and if it was treated (varnished) before. Lemon oil works well for restoring the luster if it is unvarnished or varnish is good shape. Most teak in the interior is actually veneer. A good teak oil, lemon oil, and even "Old English" can be enough. The interior usually doesn't experience the rigors of teak topside (which should be treated with Giu's "Nothing" tm).... Go all out with a light sanding and add your varnish of choice or use the suggestion listed previously.
Polyurethane is good--when it gets scuffed you can fine sand it and put a new coat on it and it looks new. Also you can chuck a wet towel on it without staining it brown!!! And it lasts a long time, no treating weekly to keep it looking good.
Maybe I have it wrong but I have always been under the impression that polyurethane can not be touched up easy or repaired. That is one of the upsides of varnish. It can be repaired and touched up.
Yeah me too, until I did one side of my Companion Way hatch with 10 coats of varnish and the other side with two coats of polyurathane. The polyurathane looks better and when it finally got scuffed on the edges I sanded it a little and recoated the scuffed areas with fast dry polyurathane and WooLa just like new. And it comes off with a heat gun just like varnish and costs less too! Old ways die hard though.
Our interior teak is unvarnished. My Aunt & Uncle suggested Murphy's Soap with water to clean it once in a while, followed by Solid Gold. It works well on our boat. Some areas that seem worn I use oil, but prefer not to if I can, they seem to cause more and attract allot of dirt.
Sailor Mitch recommended to me once using Minewax Paste Finishing Wax or similar, he has used it on his boat and must say it looks great.
The interior teak on our new '88 Sabre 30 had only been teak oiled by the PO.It looked dull and a little dirty. We are cleaning it with Starbrite Teak Cleaner, sanding smooth, Applying Watco Teak oil finish to feed the wood, letting that dry 72 hours, then a quick wipe with acetone to get off the surface teak oil, followed by 2 coats of gloss Minwax wipe on polyurethane and a top coat of satin Minwax wipe on poly. It looks great and it should just need to be wiped down periodically to remove surface dirt.We didn't want to have to keep reapplying teak oil, so spending a little more time in the beginning seemed justified in our minds.
Question: Why does varnish need constant care on teak but lasts forever on gelcoat?
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