CaptmWil's Short Shot 2003.001

I was on the cruise liner "Norwegian Dream" in the Baltic Sea in July.  I
was surprised to see that she has some teak decks, complete with black
caulking.

The crew was replacing some of the calking, and their methods might help
some of you who still have this job.

Most of the work was done with a router with a straight bit.  The operator
would dig out a small part of the calking with the hand tool I'll describe
later.  Then he would set the height of the router bit to the proper depth
to just get to the bottom of the cut.  The bit blade was just the right
width to completely clean the sides of the cut.  Then it was an easy job to
take most of the joint out with the router.  The cuts were clean and
straight and done quickly.  The hand tool was used to finish up at the end
of the cuts or in places where the width of the router prevented using the
router.

The hand tool was a wood chisel that had been ground to the exact width of
the cut and worked like a charm.  I used such a chisel for the whole job on
the AfterSail, and it worked well.  I just used it for the whole job.  The
router was much faster and easier  and seemed to be a better job.

Re-caulking was also interesting.  They just filled the new cut with some
black material in a caulking gun (looked like 101) and smoothed it off with
a flexible metal putty knife.  That left the top part of the grain around
the cut black with the excess caulking - but level.  After all was cured in
a day or two, they just sanded the whole thing with an orbital sander.

It all took much less work than the way I did it, and it looked better also.
One of the things that made it all go so well was that the teak deck was
smooth to start with.  Their maintenance schedule keeps the wood decks
sanded all the time.  At first, I though this would wear away the wood too
fast for use on a Trawler, but the more I think about, the more I suspect
that it is the way to go.

After the sanding job, they applied some kind for finish that just brought
out the color of the grain.  I don't know what the finish was, but it wasn't
any kind of oil, or varnish.  It had a slight satin look, but maintained
good footing.

CaptnWil
captnwill@earthlink.net

The man operating the router would have to be (and probably was) highly
skilled with a steady hand! If any one of us were to be tempted to do this,
one should use a straight bit with a top bearing. I'll bet that's what he
was using because first he used his special chisel. That made room for the
bearing which rides on either side of the teak channel. I also believe that
the bit was ever so undersized. If you ran a bit that touched both sidewalls
you run the risk of the bits overheating. Anyway, the next time it wouldn't
touch, right? Finally, because teak contains silica, be sure that the bit
has tungsten carbide cutting edges and not HSS. If anyone dares to do this,
please place pictures on a website!

Ron Rogers
----- Original Message -----
From: "Wilbur Andrews" captnwill@earthlink.net

| Most of the work was done with a router with a straight bit.  The operator
| would dig out a small part of the calking with the hand tool I'll describe
| later.  Then he would set the height of the router bit to the proper depth
| to just get to the bottom of the cut.  The bit blade was just the right
| width to completely clean the sides of the cut.