Let’s start with this–I know for a fact that Mahdee had a traditional heart pine sole when she was launched. It says so right there in Crocker’s design specs for the boat and I have little doubt that it did exist. However, when we got the boat, she had this interesting sole made up of a bottom layer of strong 3/4″ marine plywood with a thin 1/2″ layer of 5″ wide teak t&g boards on top. Lots of panels of this stuff and it took us forever to get it (mostly) all back together in the boat.
We didn’t bother refinishing it since we figured it needed to be stripped, bleached and major time sanded and we’d put that off until the rest of the interior was done. Along the “edges” of these panels where the sole goes under the furniture and intersects with the hull ceiling, there’s a varying 1″ wide to 10″ wide (depends on where you are in the boat) section of marine ply subfloor that we installed that needs to have the thin teak glued to it in order for it to “match” the rest of the funky teak sole.
Yesterday we pulled out all the various ugly pieces of this crazy teak that had been used for this edging in the past and that we’ve had in a long bundle stored partially atop a fuel tank under the cockpit and partially alongside the engine, where it can whack us on the noggin’ whenever we’re not careful about hunching down under the bundle when passing through that area. I mostly avoid this treacherous part of the boat. Between the head-thumping bundle of teak and the fact that this part of the boat on each side of the engine has no sole but rather a steep increasing slope down into a wineglass hull shape that is a bit scary to start sliding down…well…the whole lack of ergonomics keeps me away and forces David to be the one who scrounges around for engine parts, garbage bags, or other sundries that happen to be stored along that part of the boat. I digress again…now we have all these chunks of teak laying out and we’ve tried to figure out how they will best be used.
Yesterday, what we finally figured out was–let’s start of with the premise that we will not use these ugly bits of teak. Plan A: How about buying a little bit of new teak? After a call to the local wood suppliers and a look at the price lists for matching old-growth (um…Burmese…) teak of $20 to $30 per board foot (one guy was quoting me prices per square foot for 1/2″ thick teak…convert that to board feet pricing and gasp! $50 per bf!). Plan B: Lets forget about matching this hideous stuff, place 1/2″ thick spacers under the built-ins that we’re building in and after we’re done with all this, put in a heart pine sole like she originally had. Price list checks–nobody has heart pine anymore and if they do…$20-$30 per board foot. Nix that idea for now.
Plan C: Let’s go to the storage unit and pull out some other better looking teak that came with Mahdee and that we were given by someone…let’s see if any of that teak can be ripped into 1/2″ thick x 5″ wide boards that will work. Needless to say, if we do that, we will have been carrying around this head banging, cracked up, ugly stuff for nada for a year and a half. That’s the life of working on a boat, I guess.
