Rocky certainly has charm, doesn't he? LOL. We value our staff stepping in front of the camera; it's not an easy task.

You are right! There is no denying it!

This is an amazing comment. We thank you so much. This will most certainly be shared with our employees. They all take immense pride in their work and are what makes the company great. Thank you for your business and referrals. This is why we do what we do, to make customers like you happy. A deck is a beautiful thing, and there is nothing like being on the water in a beautiful boat with beautiful decking. Fair winds and a following seas! Happy Teakdecking Systems :)

@@TeakdeckingSystems The way you treat your crew (work family) is indicative of why they put out 💯%! Thank you for replying! It's nice to know you received my accolade! God bless!

First of all, thank you but its our honor to restore such important vessels of history. As for the coolest thing we have ever found, I will have to ask around the shop and see what we can come up with. Did you know that Steven Segal's movie Under Seige was filmed on the USS Alabama?

Shes a beautiful ship. Was a job filled with a lot of pride.

We go anywhere, and that is the truth. We have installed decks all over the world. But you are right, Mobile is a beautiful city as is others on the other side of the bay such as Fairhope!

What a great site to be able to see on a regular basis. And thank you.

Thank you so much.

Eric is our star! One day, Hollywood may give him a call. Until then, we are fortunate enough to have such talent on our staff!

Thank you. As Richard says, a lot of pride went into that deck. The process was amazing. From completely digitizing the deck to creating the CAD files, to building the deck on our floor, crating it and sending it to her to be install and then the final installation. Please like our channel. I will do a video of some of the process. Thank you for your compliments and recognition of our work!

As mentioned, we have many veterans working with us. The pride could not be contained!

Evil.

@@TeakdeckingSystems I could "feel" that freaking awesome comment all the way up here on the West Coast! God's perfect blessings back to and yours 💔✝️❤️‍🩹❤️

@@Eatswell 👹

@@TeakdeckingSystems ..... teak decking???? I gotta check you out! That must look bEe-YoU-tUh-FuL!

We understand and have been researching alternative sources of teak and modified wood for over 10 years. Plantation teak is one option, offering a more sustainable alternative, albeit with some compromises in quality and appearance. Higher-quality teak wood is typically harvested from trees 40-50 years old or older. Composites are another option. We recently did work on the USS Iowa and they chose to use composite materials to replace the deck. Please subscribe to our channel as we will be discussing this further in future videos and in fact have other videos on our channel that discuss our alternative solutions. Thank you for watching and replying.

Truth be told, many of our deck builders did the same! It was a proud project for our company.

We completely agree. As a company, to be entrusted with the responsibility of preserving our country's history was something every employee took great honor in. Thank you.

@@TeakdeckingSystems Great to see a company that takes pride in the quality of their work and appreciate their country so much. Wish you guys all the best.

Thank you! You too!

Thank you! When people love doing what they do, it shows in the quality of the product. We are proud of our team on "both sides of the pond"! Please subscribe to our channel for more videos. We appreciate the support.

Do you find it works well?

I like it doesn't trap my hand way in the back and helps balance

How do you find it?

Glad you found it interesting

These are the ones that work for us.

Probably not!

Thanks for your comment and for watching our video! We are proud of our finished product. Although this video only shows a short time working on a grate, woodworking by hand is truly a skill one can be proud of.

Thank you for your reply and we are excited that we may have sparked some ideas for you. Our products may be designed for sea-going vessels of all kinds, but of course, teak and other fine woods are used on shore as well. Please feel free to reach out to one of our professionals for any help or ideas that you may want to discuss. You can contact our corporate office at 941-756-0600 and we would enjoy brainstorming with you!

You are right, Teak requires maintenance. There are many boat owners who would rather not put time into maintenance into servicing a teak deck. We have developed our composite decking for those customers. Composite has many advantages besides less maintenance; it is highly durable for heavy traffic and work areas. Please check out our website for composite options. www.teakdecking.com

Hi Jose, they are not available in Europe Im afraid.

In regard to sanding your deck, that is, of course, a decision that should be made after evaluating the thickness left of your deck. If it is marginal, and you only feel you can sand once (instead of before and after caulking), then one way to approach it is to sand the deck before caulking, then tape off your seams before caulking to greatly minimize sanding after caulking. You will find that sanding your deck prior to caulking will mean far less sanding after you caulk (without using tape). Since sanding helps to remove the grooves in the deck that hold the caulk after applying it to the seams, it takes a very nominal amount of sanding after caulking if the deck is already nice and flat. If you caulk before sanding with no tape, it takes far more sanding to remove all the caulk excess if no tape was used. The reason this happens is the sanding not only removes the rough, harder grain that you see when the deck has been worn over time but also flattens the teak surface; in other words, sort of surface hardens it. Teak has a lot of natural resins, and sanding is like applying a new finish to your teak that will make caulking easier and give you the benefit of a longer wearing surface. If you have any questions about how you should approach your re-seaming project, please feel free to call us. Sometimes, we will ask for pictures to help us give you the best possible recommendations.

@@TeakdeckingSystems thank you for the lengthy and informative response! It makes sense to sand before caulking as you suggest, and I think the result would be really good looking. But it would eat up a lot of teak thickness. Personally I intend to tape the entire deck before caulking as to save as much of the teak as possible. I’ve cut out 98% of the old seams by now, and still have a lot of work to finish before I can start taping and recaulking.

Thank you so much. It is a really great story.

Thanks for your question regarding making repairs to your deck. Our purpose-made teak deck epoxy products are the best and most permanent solution for replacing or re-fastening your decking. We make two recommendations for this, FFE-200, which is a super strong adhesive epoxy that can also be used to fill voids, as it can be sanded. We also have FE-180, which is a bit thicker and has a little longer working time. Both are “equal mix” epoxies, you mix equal amounts of part A&B. Never mix more than you can use in about 40 minutes, and keep in mind that all epoxies will cure faster if a larger amount of the product is mixed at one time. Be sure to clean the area you are working in well, and wipe both the board and deck with acetone prior to gluing. We also have a one-part glue in a sausage tube for small repairs called MPS-4000. It is different than 3M 5200 and other similar glues as it has a very quick “green time”; in other words, be sure when you place the board in that glue that it is where you want it to be! The MPS-4000 is specially made to keep a part where you place it. Although we always would rather use epoxies to glue decking, the MPS-4000 is a good alternative if you want to make a quick and easy repair.

Thanks, we are asked that question a lot! The answer is - as many times or as often as you want! Our ECO-100 does not damage your deck but will do an excellent job cleaning and brightening it. The most important thing to keep in mind is the type of brush used. For best results and also to help keep your teak “flat” (without grooves), we recommend the red Scotch Brite scrub pads. They do a great job and are easy to use, as the pad is non-directional and can be used in any direction. A scrub brush is fine, too, but it should always be used against the grain so as not to dig out the soft wood, which can result in a prematurely “rough” surface occurring in a reasonably short period. The best way to use our ECO-100 powder is to wet the deck, sprinkle the powder on the wet deck, and scrub it in. For the best brightening effect, allow the ECO-100 that has been scrubbed in to stay for about 10 minutes, keeping a mist of water on it so it doesn’t dry. Repeat scrubbing, and get ready to see a huge difference! Don’t worry about the cleaner going into your local marina or waterway; ECO-100 is 100% environmentally friendly and is able to be flushed overboard with no ill effects.

Thank you. We are often asked about varnishing and how it can be done with our SIS440 teak deck caulk. Unfortunately, to achieve the longevity that our SIS440 is known for, it had to be made in such a way that it would withstand UV, about any chemical you can throw at it, and a considerable amount of deck flexing/wood movement. To achieve all of these things, we had to give up something, and that, unfortunately, was making a product that varnish would not stick to. Having said that, we do have some customers that are determined to work around that issue. After a phone call with a customer recently who was restoring an old Lyman runabout, we discussed how he could work out using our SIS440 and varnishing “with it”. (not over it) What he did was to varnish the deck, then carefully taped off his caulk seams. He then used some sandpaper and carefully roughed up the seams, vacuumed them, and cleaned them with isopropyl alcohol. (you don’t want acetone near fresh varnish!) He then freshened up the tape and used our white caulk in the seams. A lot of work, admittedly, but he had already experienced problems with two other popular brands that both failed. It was worth it to him to go the extra mile; the result was fantastic! If you would like to email me (Jeff) at [email protected] I think I can find the picture he sent of the finished project. In addition to that method, some customers (especially in the UK) have sanded and then varnished over our caulk. But these boats are covered most of their life, and inside. Eventually, it can and probably will fail, but they had such bad luck with other sealants they were willing to try. There is a primer that will help if you can find it. A water-based shellac applied over the seams appears to provide enough isolation from the movement of the caulk and will bond to it, but the source we used to have for it in Florida quit making it. If you find something like that made by someone else, we’d be willing to test it. There is one other product you might want to look into that customers have used with our caulk successfully in the past, which is Deks Olje #1 & #2 wood finish. They use a special additive that makes the varnish flexible. We cannot promise success with any product/method, just trying to give you all of the information I have. ANY solution you decide to try should always be tested first before proceeding. As you can see by reading the above, there are ways to try and varnish with our SIS440, but unfortunately at this time we still have to have as our official policy that you cannot reliably varnish over our caulk.

Sorry, Pete, you are absolutely right, and we have remedied that situation so as to not let this happen again.

Hello, let me first address your question regarding the deck substrate glued with epoxy. Which epoxy did you use? Our FFE-200 or FE-180 will adhere just fine to decking with our caulk. I cannot recall having had a customer first use West Epoxy and then varnish over it, so I’m not sure how that would last long term. Most likely the West Epoxy would stay adhered to the deck due to the “bridging effect” of having the epoxy layer that adheres to the wood forming a continuous layer over the caulk seam. We don’t know how long the wood movement may occur over time before you start to see a “shadow” where the caulk may begin to separate from the epoxy. Without testing, this is something we cannot predict. Officially, we have to say that you cannot varnish or epoxy over our caulk as it doesn’t last long-term. Still, please read my prior reply to another customer who asked about varnishing for other possibilities. We have had customers who used Deks Olje #1 & #2 successfully over our caulk; it is a thinner product and has that additive they use, making it a flexible finish. These are all suggestions, but please conduct a test before proceeding with your entire deck. Unfortunately, our official policy still has to be that varnish does not adhere well to our caulk because of its composition and how much it can - and generally will move with the nature of wood, the natural expansion and contraction.

Hello, you have some good questions and observations. Many decks are built with a “rabbet”, in other words when the deck is laid the builder cuts a “notch” usually about halfway or slightly more in the boards and that is used to space them when they are laid out on the deck for fastening or gluing. You mentioned that you have 10mm of wood depth left, but then also said 2mm? If it is 10mm of teak, then you have plenty to work with. But, if there is a thin layer of teak built on 5mm of plywood, that doesn’t leave you anything to work with. I always recommend that a customer looking to re-seam their deck to first perform a survey to determine if the process is worthwhile. Unfortunately, not all vessel manufacturers build decks the same and although I don’t know what type boat you have, I know that some powerboats from the UK, Italy, and France all may have been supplied with decks that have a thin layer of teak, and sometimes use a plywood substrate. This can be deceiving, as it appears that you have more to work with than you really do. Hopefully, a reputable company will warn you if they see that the deck really is not worth re-seaming. I recommend customers to use a pen knife and check the deck in at least a dozen different places, all over the vessel. For instance, you will find more wear up (& less depth) forward on the forward bow-weatherdeck and on the swim platform than you will find further aft on the walkways and in the cockpit. Before committing to a re-seam, educate yourself! If any doubts or if you need more information - please call us and we will help you evaluate your deck.

@@TeakdeckingSystems Thank you for your reply. Well I already did it and I had 10 mm (former 15mm) of natural grown teak. Dokumentation: net.co.at/Vagabond47_Teakdeckrenovation_EN.pdf The main problem is the fast grown plantation teak on new boats. This teak is not worth to spent the money for the craftmanship required to lay it on deck. My teak is of 19981 and it was no problem at this time in Taiwan to get natural teak

Yes, isopropyl alcohol is the second choice to acetone. Not a bad choice either, it is what we used to use in our factory on all of our new decks until we found that acetone works a little better and is quicker for our guys working on the seam table to use. Nothing at all wrong with using isopropyl alcohol!

It sticks fine to mahogany, but there will be a problem if you try to varnish over it. Nothing wrong with using it as a sealing bead at a base joint, where you can varnish right up to the caulk. Some people also apply the caulk after varnishing, please read my previous reply that addresses how to best perform that task.

Absolutely! Jeremy is an asset to the company!

Jeremy continues to move up the ladder here at TDS with his hard work and dedication. He is a valued employee with a tremendous future here at Teakdecking Systems.