repairing teak rub rail

[LookingForCruiser]

Hi all,

Looked at a few boats this weekend, one, an Iroquois catamaran, had massive teak rub rails / toe rails. On this particular boat, one was split at the stern, another split at the bow. Don't know how it got split, hull looked OK near the split parts so if it was a collision it didn't leave a mark on the fiberglass that I could see.

I was wondering, in repairing them, would the whole 30' length of teak need to be replaced, or can new pieces be spliced in ?

I expect that splicing in is probably the preferred much cheaper way, just don't know if the splice would be able to handle the stress of being curved around the hull.

[sailingdog]

You can usually scarf in a repair.

[kaluvic]

My rub rails are thru bolted with the nuts on the inside of the hull at about 8" centers.

If its like mine and you can access the nuts in those areas I would see no problem in splicing new pieces on the ends, but may be a big job.

However...depending on how they're "split" it may be possible to glue/clamp/bolt or screw them back together.

[jimmalkin]

SD is right. The best method is to scarf in a piece of wood; just did that this winter to fix a bite that was taken out of our cap rail during a midnight USCG inspection boarding when I was silly enough to travel up the East River past the UN late at night during UN week. But - that's off topic. Scarf a piece in and it will be virtually unnoticeable after a couple of months.