Is there life after Cetol

[Quickstep192]

My boat has a pretty considerable amount of teak. About 6 years ago, it was all stripped to bare wood and coated with Cetol. It's been re-coated three time since. It's not in awful shape now, but there are places where it's worn through or is peeling. I think there's nothing to do but sand and scrape it all off and go back to square one.

Once back to bare wood again, what would you do?

Cetol again?
Varnish?
Leave it bare?

I know this is highly subjective, but I'm very interested in people's preferences and reasons.

[nightowle]

I did varnish on my boat and not impressed with the durability. I plan on removing it and going with Cetol. If you got 6 years from Cetol, with only 3 further applications......that seems like good mileage to me.

[camaraderie]

Sand to bare wood...two coats of Cetol Natural...two coats of Cetol Gloss. Go sailing for a while! Touch up ONLY with Cetol gloss when needed.

[erps]

My boat has a pretty considerable amount of teak. About 6 years ago, it was all stripped to bare wood and coated with Cetol. It's been re-coated three time since. It's not in awful shape now, but there are places where it's worn through or is peeling. I think there's nothing to do but sand and scrape it all off and go back to square one.

I'm in the same spot and frankly I don't have time for perfect teak. I sanded down the bare spots and the peeling spots only and then put another coat of Cetol on. The bare spots are covered and protected now, but they're a lighter color then the rest of the teak. It's good enough for me. Next summer I'll put a few more coats on the lighter areas so they'll blend in better. Maybe when we're retired, we'll have perfect teak but for now, decent looking teak works for us.

[brak]

My boat has more teak than a rainforest. It was cetol-ed a while ago and cetol was in a fairly bad shape. What I usually do is simply sand it enough to remove lose paint and create a tooth in whatever is left, clean it with alcohol and re-cetol again. I am not sure anyone will agree with me on aesthetic merits of this, but to me it looks nice enough, holds well, limits amount of work I have to do and (most importantly) leaves as much wood as possible intact. A few times of "sand to bare wood" and I would have to rebuild the boat. just my 5 cents.

[speciald]

I used one coat of clear Cetol on freshly sanded teak to make the color uniform and then followed with three coats of Bristol Finish. It has held up well in the tropics for three + years with minimal maintenance.

[brucelongman]

I own a sailing charter company and we own and maintain THREE sailboats. Up until now we have used Cetol light. Problem with Cetol is that is is not hard and with constant use (clients walking over deck, etc. 7 days a week) it does not last long. PLus the FL sun bakes it and we had to redo our teak 3 x a year. We we have switched to the much hardier (and much more expensive) Honey Teak by Signature - so far so good and it looks fabulous, far better than Cetol, the shine is unbelievable. And after three months I don't sea single scrape or bake mark in it.

[wumhenry]

Why not paint it?

[sailboy21]

Paint doesn't wok well on teak due to teaks oil. Unless, maybe you use Smiths Epoxy as a primer.

[Quickstep192]

My other hobby is woodworking. I don’t think I could bring myself to paint teak. Obscuring the grain with Cetol is bad enough. Wait a minute...... Has wumhenry inadvertently helped me answer my own question. OR is he SO shrewd, he did the reverse psychology thing on me without me realizing it!