Trojan Boat Forum

OK, I am sure this has been asked over and over, but I can't find it anywhere, and I did search. I have a 1958 Trojan Sea Queen, 15 footer, and I need to finish it from the bare wood (teak I believe). The finish that was on it when I bought just flaked off right down to the bare wood, so I have sanded it all down to the wood and have removed the caulking from the deck. Now, I have never done anything like this and I want to end up with a beautiful boat of course, and I have to totally refinish this thing.
Can someone tell me how to do this? What do I buy for the caulking, would you use Cetol or Epifanes? How many cans am I going to need (or how many pints/quarts?) we don't have any place around that sells this so I am going to have to order it, and the description online never says the estimated coverage of these, so I don't have any numbers to figure out how much to order. I figure my deck and rails are approximately 25 square feet.
I would like to end up with a rich dark finish, am I going to have to stain it or will the cetol/Epifanes darken it up according to how many coats I put on? All the photos that I find of people finishing their boats just say that they are using the Epifanes, saying nothing about staining but still end up with a nice darker finish.
Thanks for any help anyone can lend to me.
Bob

I like Epifanes, and yes varnish will darken the wood . Epifanes will hold up better but it won't have the same look .

These folks are up the lake from me and do exceptional work. Maybe you can find out what it is they like to use. Their contact infor is on their page.

http://www.hackerboat.com/

I'd use brown mahogany stain then Interlux wood sealer then Captains varnish. That's what I use on my sea voyager. Use black lifecaulk for the deck strip seams.

Thank you all for the advice! I am going with Chris Craft Red Mahogany stain and Epifanes high gloss varnish, hope it turns out like I am envisioning it

When I had my '61 Chris Connie, I believe the stain of choice at the time was a Petit red mahogany stain with a filler in it. Worked great to fill in the grain. Rub off across the grain with a tack cloth and the filler stays in the grain. Got a smooth flat finish very quickly with a lot less coats as the filler covers the pits the coating would normally need a few applications to fill. Having said that, the more coats the better. Expensive stain but I always liked working with it and thought it was worth the extra price. Gave me a real deep rich finish.

When I first got our F36 I stripped down all the wood, sanded, and applied 5 coats of Interlux Schooner High Gloss varnish. This is s 1 part poly varnish and it was beautiful. I was advised that once or twice a year I should lightly sand and re-coat as the sun literately burns the varnish right off.
I did not heed that advice. By the end of the 2nd season, there were places around the toe rail that were totally exposed, especially edges, and then it started to peel as soon as water could migrate under the edges of the varnish. It looked horrible. I always wanted to come back to the marina in the dark so people couldn't see what had become of her.
So, two years later, I sanded it all off and did it again. This time, I kept up with the re-coats. On my F36, 1 quart just covers the toe rail all the way up the bow and back, and then a light coat of the teak deck, about 10x10 in the aft cockpit area.
This year, I thought that there had to be a better way. The advise I got was to epoxy or resin the wood first and then coat with varnish. The resin is hard as hell and won't burn off at the rate that varnish does. It creates a shell for the wood (which preserves it but it will also trap anything in like if you get water migrating in from underneath some how). At the end of this season, it still looked great. I used WestSystems, a little more expensive but pretty predictable. I used 1 Gal of resign and the matching quart or so of hardner. That provided 3 full coats over all the wood as described before. You can see where the edges where we board the boat have worn down, but no wood was ever exposed so its still the dark rich color. It was a lot more work to lay out two part resin over everything, but I think it was well worth it.
In the spring I have one area that I have to strip and re-do because while the resin was curing, it rained before it set up and that area turned yellow in places.

Coating in epoxy first is a good idea but epoxy breaks down pretty quickly with UV exposure so ensure that what ever you coat it with has a high UV protection rating. The other option is to use Cetol. It gives a decent finish and doesn't need to be sanded before applying another coat a couple of years later. If you do that every couple of years, you'll have a nice lasting finish with very little work compared to options that need sanding between coats every few years.