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Re: teak transom
If you're considering teak for your transom or brightwork but don't want the headaches, you might want to check out airteak.com. Almost zero maintenance and years of looking perfect. It's about the same cost as "real" teak at installation but over the years of ownership the savings are dramatic in both time and money. Decide for yourself at airteak.com and let me know your thoughts.
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Re: teak transom
Good friend had his transom and toe rails on a 50 Viking done with airteak last spring and it turned out great. Was a doubter till I saw it in person.
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Re: teak transom
I've got airteak on one of my boats (intentionally not mentioned). We had some problems with it about a year ago. Not sure what the issue was - the product, the adhesive or the install, but it was all installed by airteak and all corrected by airteak. Its still looks good another year later after the repair, but the jury is still out. A friend of mine was contemplating putting it on the aft wall and transom of another boat, but wanted to see how my airteak faired... Good call for him. I will say that airteak stood behind their product and addressed the issue quickly and efficiently. They were very good to work with. Failures can happen any time, it was nice that the folks at airteak jumped on it and fixed it. The product does look great, especially with a few layers of epoxy shot on it then a few layers of clear varnish.
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Re: teak transom
I have two boats, a sailboat with teak decks and a forrest of teak everywhere.....And my Hatteras with almost zero exterior wood. I LOVE the look of polished teak inside a boat. It has no place whatever on the exterior. Not unless you can afford to have it professionally maintained all the time. It's just not worth the time and aggravation of dealing with it. If you mount teak on a cored structure, NEVER screw it down. Use epoxy or something similar.
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Re: teak transom
I agree. There isn't enough meat in a cored panel to hold the fasteners, PLUS water leaks in along them, inevitably.
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Re: teak transom
Thinking about this. If someone wants a teak transom, why does one need such thick material if its purely for looks? I imagine using wood the same thickness as you would for cold molding would work just fine. It would be set into epoxy and have whatever impervious top coats to protect it. No screws at all. Just epoxy. The Gougeon brothers on building with epoxy seems to spell that out quite well. Maybe I'm missing something here.