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Manufacturing

Sarasota, Florida, USA

Teak

Teak arriving from Asia is unloaded and stored in one of our ventilated wood storage buildings. At any one time, Teakdecking Systems has millions of dollars worth of yacht quality teak ready for your project. From the storage buildings, the teak is moved into our milling shop.

Image of cut teak timber in a storage building at Teakdecking Systems

Milling

Teak is molded into battens for decks or re-sawn for margin trim, covering boards, caprails, gratings and other marine profiles. If the moisture content is found to be outside of our guidelines, the teak is cycled through our on-site kiln to remove excess moisture.

Stack of teak on the factory floor at Teakdecking Systems

Sorting

After milling, the teak planks are sent to their respective sorting areas, where each batten and trim board is quality inspected for imperfections and grain structure. They are then sorted by size and moved to racks in our panel assembly area.

Cut teak stored by lengths in the factory at Teakdecking Systems

Panel Assembly

The battens are transferred to create either straight or curved panels. We have a patented capability of adjusting battens to the curve of any vessel’s planksheer. After loading the teak battens for the proper type decking a watertight backing is applied, using our custom blended production epoxy, to create panels of teak decking.

Assembling battens into a panel for a teak deck

Caulking

The first steps are the most critical, as that is where we degrease and apply bondbreaker tape to the seams. Once the seams are ready to receive our proprietary SIS440 teak deck caulking, it is pumped into the seams. When the seams are filled with caulking, the panels are stored for a period of time to allow the caulking to thoroughly cure.

Image of caulking seams at the factory with pneumatic gun

Sanding

When the panels are ready to become teak decks, they are run through a panel sander to remove excess caulking, and to achieve the final, specified thickness. From sanding, the panels are moved onto the trim floor, an area 263′ X 50′ (80m X 15m). Before the panels are cut to size, all of the margin and hatch trim, kingplanks, drains, and other details are completely drawn out. In most cases, the layout designs have been prepared in our design and drafting department.

Images of employees sanding a large curved panel

Trim

The layout drawing is inspected by Quality Control, the production manager, and the project manager, to ensure that proper marine woodworking practices and styling details have been incorporated into the design layout. Once approved, our experienced marine carpenters go to work, cutting the panels to size, and shaping all of the trim pieces that add up to a TDS pre-trimmed deck.

Teakdecking Systems manufacturing floor with many decks laid out