The first mistake that I made when starting to remove the teak overlay from my decks was trying to be gentle and first knock out the bungs and back out all the screws...........BOY!!!! was this a fantasy!!!!
First of all the bungs that don't come right out are in solid and require drilling and scraping out in pieces...a VERY time consuming process and when you finally get the screw head, they are almost invariably filled with some kind of solidified substance that prevents you from getting the screw bit into the grooves....so you try and force it and end up stripping the head...........a real pain in the ole' buttocks.....here's what you do....FIRST: determine what area you are removing....my advice is to divide up the project in manageable segments. On ZOSHA the first area was the lazzarette hatch and little aft deck.....the second segment was the entire cockpit .......the third is the port and starboard side decks ....the fourth and last will be the foredeck.....#3 and #4 have yet to be done on ZOSHA.
SECOND: Examine the wood in the area that you are going to remove and back out all the easily accessible screws.....in my project, probably 1/4 of the screws could be backed out at this point ....on ZOSHA these screws were mostly 1", #6 self-tapping stainless steel pan heads.....these things are about 20 cents apiece at West Marine so save as many as you can. Once you have removed all the easy screws......get you circular saw.................yes I said CIRCULAR SAW!!!!!! set the blade depth to almost the thickness of the teak and begin scoring the teak any which way you can. Watch Out for screws under the bungs- be observant here!!! The more small segments you can carve out, the easier the removal process will be. See Photo #1
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THIRD: Make sure you have a hefty pry bar......don't do what I did....start with a little wimpy 10 inch baby bar......trying to be gentle....see photo #2.......that little pry bar is cute but worthless.....totally worthless!!! Get a big pry bar.....the one I ended up getting was the 18" at Home Depot......$11.95....I think. OK...once the teak is scored, pick a starting point and hammer the pry bar under the teak and PRY!!!!! The wood will come up....sometimes easy and sometimes not. If you are on a screw.....PRY!!! the wood will pull through the screw and you can back it out later. What you will probably find with all this prying is that the wood is saturated underneath and will pull thru the screw very easily. Sometimes the screw will pull out of the deck.....check these holes carefully for water penetration.......most of the screws that you pry thru remain secured screwed into the deck.....this is a good sign that your deck is solid.....in my entire cockpit there were dozens of screws holding the teak down but only one pulled out of the deck.....in all the other cases, the screw remained solid in the deck and pulled through the wood. To me, this was the FUN part...........see photos #3- #6:
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You'll get the idea now-just work your way thru all the teak hammer, pry, hammer pry...DA DA DA DA.....and before you know it, all the teak is gone and you are now looking at one of the biggest friggin' messes that you could ever comprehend and begin to TOTALLY REGRET what you have started.....this is where we will begin next time.....Good hammerin' and pryin' to you all.... Seeya
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