Teak that snags a sleeve or leaves fibres on your palm is not worn out. It is a surface condition with a specific cause and a specific fix, and no cleaner on the market addresses it. Here is what is actually happening and what changes it. What rough teak actually is The fuzz you feel is raised grain: soft early-wood fibres standing proud of the harder late-wood bands around them. The timber underneath is intact. The surface has simply eroded unevenly, because the two kinds of wood in every growth ring do not wear at the same rate. Run a finger across the seat slats of a rough chair and you can feel it, hard ridges with softer valleys between them and loose fibres standing up out of the valleys. That texture is also why rough teak gets dirty faster than smooth teak. Every ridge and lifted fibre is somewhere for dirt to lodge. What raises it Three causes, in the order we see them. Pressure washing blasts the soft bands out from between the hard ones in seconds. Repeated wet-dry cycling swells fibres and then shrinks them until they lift and stay lifted. And abrasive cleaning, meaning wire brushes, coarse pads and scouring powder, tears fibres rather than cutting them. There is a four
Teak & Shine — (631) 796-9505 — cleanmyteak@gmail.com
Serving Montauk, Amagansett, East Hampton, Bridgehampton, Sag Harbor, Water Mill, Southampton, Quogue Village.