Sunday, June 8, 2014

Refinishing the Interior Wood Work

The interior rehab of my 6.9 is slowly taking shape. I try to do something each year to improve the looks of this old piece of classic plastic from the 1980s.  Recently I took some of the wood trim off of the interior of the boat and have been reconditioning those pieces.  The wood was only given a light stain when it was installed almost 30 years ago.

S2 did not use a lot of wood on their production boats.  The pieces that I have been working on include the stairs, bulkheads, lifting keel trim and bunk trim.  These all seem to be made out of teak or teak veneer. 

The process is pretty simple and almost anyone can do it. Simply take the pieces off. Most are held on by a few screws. The bulkheads are fixed so they had to be refinished in place.

I used a vibrating detail sander with 120-180 grit sand paper.  I also used a vacuum attachment to keep the sanding dust to a minimum.

The teak stairs were the first pieces that I tackled.  The stairs are held onto the companionway by 8 screws.


The stairs treads are each held together by 3 screws on each side. Remove these to break down the stairs into the pieces so they can be easily sanded.

Sand them down to remove any stains and water damage.  Wipe the pieces down with some mineral spirits.  I used a tack cloth to remove all dust prior to varnishing the pieces.  I applied 3 coats of varnish with a light sanding between coats.

You can use any type of varnish. I used a satin finish poly urethane from my local building supply store.

I also removed two trim pieces from the aft bunks and the bulk head piece from the lifting keel.


I added some non skid tape made by 3M to the treads of the stairs
Here are the bunk trim pieces back in place
Here are the stairs reassembled and back on the boat. As you can see it turned out very nice 
The lifting keel trip piece back in place


Starboard bulkhead refinished


New LED fixture


Head bulkhead before refinishing
 

All bulkheads refinished with new lighting

Head bulkhead refinished with new LED light fixture

 

Mark