The light color is probably due to bleaching of the wood through the varnish. Heat gun or chemically strip (covering the stripper with saran wrap to increase effectiveness), then sand enough to reveal the darker color.My 42" trawler needs her cabin doors revarnished.
They are a little to light for my taste. Should I take em down to bare wood or use a tinted varnish and go over existing?
Jenny, we have owned two boats now with lots of teak. We have used every type of finish and varnish over the years. We finally settled on Cetol and have not regretted it one bit. You can use different bases to get different looks. We chose the natural with 3 coats and then 3 coats of gloss. Now we only have to do a maintenance coat once a year, even living in south Florida full time. My advise would be to walk the docks and see if a neighbor boat has a finish you like. Then talk to the owner about how maintenance intensive that finish is. Here are a couple of our blog posts, The Trawler Beach House: Another Update and The Trawler Beach House: Refinishing The Hatches . Chuck
Bristol Finish works very well here in the FL sunshine. I’ve gotten as many as 5 to 6 years on my one piece of exterior teak - the cap rail.
Take note though that if the varnished wood moves, Bristol will crack and once water gets under it, it’s wood scraper time. You only need to redo the damaged area - it can be faired in.
I know that all (most?) wood finishes are susceptible to this, but Bristol seems a little bit harder and cracks a little earlier than some of the Interlux exterior varnishes.
Mike
The doors jams appear fine but the cap rail really peeled off in small sheets.
Flatsflyer,
One of the downsides to using fast evolving hot new products.
Call the folks at Fisheries Supply. Talk to the resident painting expert and ask him if there is a compatible or equivalent product.
Flatsflyer beat me to it. Bristol called us a couple of weeks ago to see if we wanted to buy their remaining stock. We didn't. I got a request for some from a guy in Turks and Caicos yesterday so I tried to call Bristol and like Flatsflyer got the message saying the phones were disconnected.