Marine varnish or Tongue oil?

[turtlemoon]

I removed my teak swim platform and ladder before shrink wrapping my A27 FC for the winter.
I’m going to sand and refinish it; which is better, tongue oil or marine varnish, or something I don’t know about yet? Turtle Moon is going to be in fresh water, not sure if that makes a difference.
Thanks for your input,
Lee

[crowra]

I have a 'classic' 36 with LOTS of teak. I gave up trying to keep the strakes and swim platform nicely varnished. I removed the varnish with Citristrip and a scraper and did some light sanding. After that, I used Amazon's Amazing One-Step Teak Cleaner (I'm sure other teak cleaning products would work fine) and went with the natural look. I only need to clean it once a year with the teak cleaner and it looks great. If you go with tongue or teak oil, you will probably be re-doing it monthly.

[Binford]

My neighbor has a teak swimstep on his Wellcraft that he uses in both fresh- and saltwater and he uses a similar teak cleaner about every other year if even that often (since it's parked in his garage when he's not actively using the boat). Looks good.

[turtlemoon]

just one question regarding the Teak Cleaner; what color does it come out? Currently, my platform is a really nasty grey, I would like it to be the same as the rest of the wood on the boat.

[crowra]

It'll look something like this. Use a Scotch-Brite blue non-scratching scrubby thingie (technical term) to work in the teak cleaner (and wear latex gloves unless you like having really dried out hands). If you want a darker look to blend with your varnished teak, you can seal it with Seafin Ship N Shore.

[turtlemoon]

Wow, looks great, thanks for your help, I'll try to post some before & afters.

[crowra]

Lee,

Here's a sample photo of an experiment I'm trying to see how long it holds up. You can see the contrast between the 'silvered' teak hatch and the cleaned lower teak with two coats of Seafin Ship 'n Shore sealer. There is no varnish on it.

Rob

[turtlemoon]

Wow, looks great. When did you do it?
According to the product discreption, it says it should be finished with their spar varnish; did you do that as well?