signature honey teak

[Bobg]

Project for this winter is to remove my teak and refinish, has anyone experienced Signature Honey Teak?, I am on Lake Superior and the cetol is flaking off, touch up doesn't match and is starting to look "spotty", thanks, I have done a search got a lot of ideas how to remove the cetol.    Bob on "Ghostrider" hull #818

[Ron Hill]

Bob : I've refinished all of the teak on my 1988 by removing it from the boat and taking it home. 
To answer your question - I found that scraping the teak was the best way to take off the heavy Cetol.  Then finish with sanding to finish it.  Just make sure that when scraping you don't go against the grain or you'll dig IN!!  Then make sure that before refinishing that you wash the teak with 50% clorox to kill any mold spores.  Then sand lightly with 120/160 grit and wipe the surface with alcohol to remove the saw dust. 
I used 3 coats of the light and then 2 coats of the gloss.  Good luck!! 

[Mark Swenson]

I have a 1989 C36 that I bought a year ago.  The teak was in terrible condition.  The previous owner had put Cetol on top of dirty green mold.  He should have been jailed for what he had done to the teak!  I took everything that was removable and brought it home last winter.  I used an orange based (nontoxic) stripper that I got at home depot to remove all the old Cetol.  It worked amazingly well.  I refinished all the exterior teak with Epithanes rather than Cetol and am very pleased with the results.

The interior teak also needed attention.  I used Daly's Sea-Fin and rubbed it in using artificial steel wool.  It looks great now!

[Hawk]

Bob,  I scraped and sanded my teak rails last summer. They were peeling and a real mess...don't know what the PO had used. I looked into varnish, cetol etc, etc. Then the fellow berthed beside me was down sanding and refinishing the teak on his 35' wooden Hong Kong built offshore double ender. So happens he singlehanded it from Vancouver to Hawaii a few years back.

Guess what he was using and swears by.....Signature Honey Teak. He had done much of his boat with it 6 years before. So I called up the owner, Tom, in Florida and he went over everything and shipped out the paint, catalyst,flow fluid and clear top coat together with detailed instructions and tips. Sure there is a little mixing and you want to scrape, light sand and apply a teak cleaner first. As he says do the prep right and then never again. The nice thing is you can re-apply coats wet after 20 minutes and be done in one day.

It looks great with a nice gloss varnish look and apparently only needs a coat or 2 of the top coat every 2 years. Seems nearly bullet proof.
I'm a believer. This is their web site:
http://www.fabulainc.com/

Tom

[Bobg]

Thank you all very much, A friend used honey teak and raves about it, looks like I have a fun winter project to do, remove all the teak and refinish in the comfort of my heated garage.  Tom at signature says to remove the cetol with a heat gun.  If it don't work I can use Rons ideas.

[Hawk]

Bob,
I used a heat gun and scaped on the rails and found that for a lot of it just scraping worked fine. Use a rounded scraper for the tops of rails and I found a small half inch flat scraper worked well for the tucked away areas.