Care and Maintenance

Teak has been prized for centuries because it is possibly the toughest wood on Earth. Consider what it had to withstand to be the wood of choice for hull planks in ancient ships plying the Pacific Ocean. Freezing temperatures near Antarctica. Across the equator, with full sun reflected from the ocean, the hull planks grew hot enough to cook an egg. And all this immersed in salt water. When a storm broke, the lives of the entire crew depended on the toughness of teak. A rotted board and there would be no rescue helicopter.

The key to achieving this toughness is to cure or season teak successfully. Curing is the process whereby the moisture in teak escapes and leaves teak ready to do its job. Soft wood like pine cures in a month or two. Because its wood is thicker, hard wood like oak takes six months. Teak is so much thicker, its wood fibers are packed so much tighter, that it takes 2 years to cure.

Teak also takes longer because so much of its moisture is sap, as opposed to just water which seeps out and evaporates quickly. Sap, and its dried residuals, is what preserves the teak so incredibly long. Sap is a highly effective mix of antibiotics (against wood rot), fungicides (against mold), and pesticides (against beetles & bugs).

So it is the very qualities that make teak last so long that require it to cure so long.

All wood starts out moist throughout, with the bark keeping in all its moisture, as in the picture at left.

Once the bark is removed, the outside of the teak begins to dry, as in the picture to the right. The core is moist, and a moisture gradient goes from dry to wet toward the inside.

As moisture leaves the outside of the wood, its volume reduces as compared to the inside. The outside tries to shrink but the inside won't let it. As shown by the arrows, the outside starts to get tight, like a belt, against the moist inside. This is how your chess set arrives, kiln dried and about 6 months into its curing process.

If you care for your chess set well for the next 18 months, all the moisture will escape and, and you'll have a luxurious chess set that can take care of itself for many generations.

Do not put your teak through a lot of temperature fluctuations during its cure. You can keep it hot or cold, but if you make it switch between hot and cold, you will add tension stress to the tight belt of drying wood. This can cause hairline cracks. These are easy to repair, but can be avoided.

The worst thing you can do to teak while its curing is to heat it locally, as by putting it in the hot sun where one side gets hot, as along the top in the picture to the left. The three arrows show how the tension stress is increasing locally as the sun cycles this area hot and cold each day.

Even worse, the sun dries out this section more than the rest of the chess piece.

Much like mud dried by the sun, this causes a deep and wide crack as in the picture below.

Crack Repair If you do run into cracks, you can often repair them yourself. Don't try to match the color of the wood around the crack, but rather make the crack appear as a natural seam in the wood. The wood around the crack will often have several colors as part of teak's elegant grain structure -- too hard to match all that. Instead, fill the crack to match the darkest wood it passes through. That will make it appear like a naturally occurring seam in the teak. Seams are common in teak where a branch formed, where the tree was injured, or where the wood folded for some mysterious reason. Don't sand the crack area before repairing the crack. Let the polyurethane mask the wood below it so the repaired crack ends up with a sharp edge, like a natural seam. Otherwise, the stain or putty you use will color the wood next to the crack, producing a blotch which doesn't occur naturally in teak. For small cracks under 1/4 inch, use an oil-based colored putty like the #144 Teakwood for the light pieces or #134 Ebony for the dark pieces from the Colored Putty company. Stuff the putty into the crack lengthwise to the crack as shown in the picture below. Remove the excess putty and smooth it out perpendicular to the crack by moving a thumb sideways as in the picture below. Note that putty never fully dries. Let it skin in an hour, and then finish with polyurethane. Never sand putty. For larger cracks, first use wood filler like the one from Minwax. Stuff it into the crack but remove enough to leave the filler 1/8" below the level of the wood surface around the crack. After the filler dries, add a thin layer of color putty. Do not sand the filler or putty before or after. Note: If the color putty gets tough to work, a couple drops of peanut oil will soften it up.

The tension stress is concentrated in this one place. As the crack expands, all the stress around the outside of the wood is relieved in this one place. It is as though the tight belt around the wood has ripped. This can also be repaired with the right filler, but it requires more skill than hairline cracks to make invisible. Another maintenance item during curing is the outbound moisture. Since water evaporates quickly, the 18 months of curing in your hands involves mostly teak's sap. This oozes up in various spots under the finish of the chess piece. It lifts up the varnish and the mix of air bubbles and dried sap appears to the untrained eye like a silvery mist among the dark pieces or dark rust or mold among the light pieces. It is neither rust nor mold, but part of the natural curing process of teak. Some people think this adds to the charm and ancient appearance of teak chess pieces. If so, you need do nothing since these spots will not hurt the teak. If you wish the chess piece to return to its unblemished appearance, a quick hand sanding will remove both the uplifted finish and the natural curing ooze. Replacing the finish with a coat of stain for the dark pieces and varnish puts the chess piece back to its as-new appearance. Note that this curing process does not proceed at the same rate throughout its two-year span. During the first year, about twice as much moisture leaves as during the second year. Likewise, during the first six months, about twice as much moisture leaves as during the second six months. This means that taking good care of your chess set is more important when you first get it than near the end of curing. For the really big or complex repairs, MegaChess has a shop with craftsmen experienced with teak. Also works if you are just too busy to do it yourself. Still have questions? Use the form to Ask the Expert. Q & A Why don't you ship chess sets with the teak fully cured? We can, but then the price of the chess set is roughly twice the regular retail price. 2 years of storage is not cheap, and we feel most customers would prefer to avoid that.