Advice sought re varnishing teak

[Maud]

Hello all

I am making some new seating for outdoors and have been told if I oil the teak I will have to continue to do this on a weekly/monthly basis and the stuff will never be fit to sit on.

I am told that the reason varnish peels off teak is that the wood is naturally oily. I have heard that there is a product, a type of sealer, that can be applied as an undercoat to the varnish to prevent this peeling.

Has anyone heard of it? Ant recommendations re this? Does anyone have any advice generally?

TIA

Maud

[Brian G]

Maud,

General advice is that someone really doesn't know what he's talking about.

Because of its oily nature, 'genuine' teak can be left in the weather without any protective coating - or given a coat of teak oil, rubbed in with a lint free cloth about two or three times a year (which can be sat upon after that has soaked in).

BTW, varnishing teak is (to me anyway) not a good idea because of the oil in the wood - it will peel AND sunlight will cause problems with *most* varnish coatings on garden furniture anyway in the long term - even the so called UV resistant.

The old teak ships of years ago hard a hard life on the high seas without any finishing coats and lasted well!

Or you could go to Google advanced search and type in -- finishing teak -- and you'll get around 96 'hits'. Try modifying the search criteria and you'll probably get even more infornation.

Brian G

[clot]

I can vouch for this. Teak decks on boats last years without an sealing - just a regular scrub of salt water!

[spamlet]

And whatever you treat it with, its going to be covered in bird poo and general dirt when you want to sit on it. I had similar thoughts about coatings when I put in an oak bench last year. Needn't have worried because I had to put a plastic cover over it - when not actually being sat on - anyway in the end!

S