International Telstar Owners Association

good morning to everyone !
yesterday was a nerves consuming day ... teak wood texture is very different from okoume texture. second thing the color is very different between them when crude and much more different when they are clear coated ! above all this , i want to paint the teak into light red/copper color ...
i have a friend who is working in a color mixing shop for different purpose paints and he has wood texture paint also. well because on his samples there was no okoume as basis and i wanted to go orange teak with the paint, he gave me 10 bottles of different pigments and he told me to mix myself as much as i wanted to )) i was very happy with this until i ve got to my work shop and start mixing ! 34 different samples i made to try to find the right one the one that looks as close as possible to the teak from different angles is with 3 different layers of paint sanded between them so the first and second one pigments remain only in the deep texture and the upper wood fiber to get the golden color of the teak ... enough talking , here is my best result after 8 hours af mixing ...

hey !
long time no see...dind't get enough time to post , but the project still goes on !!!
so i will post the steps i have made from the last posting ...
after i have consider that i have found the best color mach possible i have started to go with the painting .i have decided to make only some stripes in nut shells for nonslip and keep as much as possible the wood to be visible. the test is with some paper tape just to get an idea of how it will look like and the deck after the wood paint ...
here are the pictures

next thing to do was the semi decks ... 3 layers of different wood pigments to obtain the closest color match to the teak deck. after that 2 layer of clear gelcoat hand made followed by sanding. next was masking the areas for the shells , hand layed gelcoat and spread the nuts. also on the nuts i have put a wood paint to bring them also to the general color . in the end a have sprayed two layers of clear gelcoat on top of everything . those were some looong days and looong nights of working because it was cold and humidity was high the materials took forever to cure....

after the last gelcoat...i am very happy with the colors and their mach )

next on the list is painting the rest of the ama in white gelcoat . sanded , made some minor repairs in different pots , small original gelcoat cracks etc...long nights again ! followed by sanding again everything with small grit and prep it for golden painting and final clear coating ...

the last days of work and the best days !!!
prepping everything and golden paint after that clear coat . i want to have warm feeling on board of this boat and decide to "frame" the wood in golden ! a lot of masking , unmasking , degreasing

more pics

unmasked before clear coating ...very pleased with all the work

and finished !!! after 2 month of work ... very tired but also very happy !
the wood is looking like a musical instrument , deep ,clear ...
the gold paint makes everything more warm and friendly ...the transition from white to wood brown is very nice looking
the white is very glossy ...
in the end all the effort worth it and all the long days and nights of work seems that they dind't even been there !!!

Brilliant job. Now for the other side!! and then the main hull.

Mike