Laying a new cabin sole (cont)

Cutting wood like this is not difficult if you have a good table-saw and a sharp blade. You need to have a fairly large motor on your table-saw to rip teak. It can be very difficult to cut and is abrasive to cutting tools. A carbide-blade is a must. I purchased a new carbide combination blade for my table saw. The saw blade was precisely 1/8" thick. This proved to be a good investment since I had a lot of cutting to do. We milled the teak into 2 3/16" boards, then cut them into three ¼" thick planks. Cutting the teak was straightforward. As always, we were very careful when running the table saw. Since the boards were so thin, I had to be extra careful. I frequently counted my fingers to make sure there were still ten. I adjusted the fence to the appropriate position and ran the boards through using push-sticks. My wife or daughter helped guide the wood. Holly was cut into 3/8" strips. Since the planks were so much thinner, the wood was more difficult to control. I originally planned to tongue-and-groove the planks, but I found the holly too difficult to control for such a precise cut. I left the edges straight. Taking about 6 hours, we cut about 30 boards each of teak and holly, each about 7 feet long. This turned out to be just enough to finish the job. I had about half a board left after completing the job. I removed the two floor hatches and resurfaced them first. I removed the pull-rings and filled the holes with epoxy filler. Using a belt-sander, I removed the finish from the hatches. I purchased a small container of parquet flooring mastic and used it to glue floor planks that I cut to match the existing pattern. I clamped and used weights to hold the wood strips in place while the mastic dried. Click on the photo below for a larger image.

The photo to the left shows the two sole hatches after the new decking was applied.