Portlights and Brightwork

We replaced the 6 fixed windows with new bronze opening portlights from New Found Metals.  We scoured for used portlights, but finding a matching 6 in the right size was not looking hopeful.  We stumbled upon New Found Metals online to find their new portlights were actually cheaper than any used ones we seen.  People want a lot for old chalky portlights with broken glass. Maybe value is added for being antique.  The customer service at New Found Metals was excellent, from helping you order the right kit, to answering installation questions.  The man in the online instruction video is the designer, manufacturer, and the person you talk to on the phone if you have any questions. He and his small staff were very helpful.

The old windows were the same as the large windows we replaced in the last post, glass set in flush with the cabin and held on with glue and tiny screws.  Half of the glass was covered in seams of caulk proceeding in rows, and the rest was a cloud from the delaminating glass.  Naturally, they all leaked pretty badly.

To begin installation, clamp drilling template in place, drill holes, and trace the outline of the new window.

The 3/8" holes drilled through the template were re-cut with a high speed 5/8" piloted cutting tool that came with the installation kit.  It leaves a much finer result than a drill, slicing off thin smooth curls as it spins.

Next, cut out the window.  AJ drilled small holes to cut out the curves, then used a multi-tool to cut the straight edges. Sand and file till smooth and even.

The portlights have a 1 1/2" spigot around them.  Our cabin sides are only 3/8" thick to start with, so we had to use teak spacers (also provided by Newfound Metals) to bring the cabin up to the 1" minimum thickness for installation.

Glue on the teak trim ring.
Sand and file the rough edges until beautiful and flush with the teak trim spacer.

Smash strips of sticky, pliable butyl rubber to the portlight.  (About half as much as shown below.) Apply neoprene weather seal tape on the outside perimeter of the outer trim ring.  Apply thinner ring of butyl to inside perimeter of the trim ring.

Clamp window on however you can... to compress the butyl and set the portlight.

Fill any gap between the cut out and spigot with butyl rubber.  Leave it standing a bit proud around the seam.  Place the trim ring and squeeze it on tight. The clamp down the trim ring to compress.

Screw the portlight to the frame from the inside.
The screws that came with the portlights accounted for maximum cabin thickness and our cabin is only 3/8" so they had to be cut to length.

Pull off excess butyl or cram in more to fill gaps.

Don't bother cleaning up the butyl edge for a day or so.  It continues to ooze out very slowly for a minimum of a few hours.  I liked working with butyl rubber after all the noxious runny caulks and epoxies. It's like a sticky, tough play-do. Just stretch it to the desired thickness, squish it around, peel off excess, mash into a ball and re-use.  It doesn't leave much residue on your fingers either, though I don't know if it ever comes out form under fingernails.

To finish, remove the screws one at a time and bed them in silicon.

Voila! Beautiful watertight opening portholes, with insert-able bug screens!  And if they ever leak  just turn the screws a little tighter to squeeze the butyl rubber a bit more, or pull off the trim ring and cram more in. Their gold shine will soon be a dull brown patina. They're already speckling and darkening on the outside.

L

While AJ worked on the engine installation I finished the exterior wood treatment.  The cockpit seats were a sad sight.  We debated whether to varnish them again, or to use the teak oil sealer we are using on the toe rails and hand rails.

The Teak Sealer won.  Varnish was just a fat list of cons in the comparison.  The first inconvenience is it's requisite sanding between coats.  One coat can take two to three days to dry, dragging out the process for days and days.  Did I mention you have to sand before applying a new coat? Another drawback is that I have to wear a respirator around it.  I thought it wouldn't be too bad in the open air, but I learned my lesson with a splitting headache, sore throat, dizziness and nausea.  Always wear the stinking mask.  In the future I'd rather not have to steer clear of the boat while varnish dries.

The teak oil sealer rectifies varnishes cons.   No sanding between coats, it dries in a couple hours, and there are no irritating fumes.  Though to use it the varnish had to be stripped completely, leaving no residue.  I started with a heat gun and a scraper, then sanded until the bright yellow teak emerged.

For first time application, wash freshly sanded teak with a teak cleaner/brightner/restorer. Hose it down with water, rub in the cleaner, let it sit a few minutes, or brush it in if the teak is really dirty, then hose it off until suds free.  It is pretty incredible stuff, it takes out the dark spots and even restores soft black rotted areas back to a hard glowing yellow teak.

When it dries apply the teak oil sealer with a foam brush.  It looks like oily peanut butter in the can, but spreads on thin and soaks into the wood; It doesn't run and doesn't leave brush stroke streaks the way varnish can so you don't have to be a careful painter.  Thick buildup spots can be wiped away with mineral spirits later.  In fact we wiped all our teak with mineral spirits afterwards to even out the application and bring out the grain.  It cures in UV, so on a sunny day it's dry in a couple hours.  If it's in the shade, or totally overcast it can stay a little sticky for a couple days.

Shown below are the toerails with a fresh coat of  Starbright Teak Oil Sealer, and the cockpit seats are nearly fully stripped of varnish.

I applied 3 coats of the teak oil sealer.  It was dry enough by the time I got from one end of the cockpit to the other to apply the subsequent coats.  It leaves a soft wood grain finish.  It turned out the same reddish color as the varnished hatches, the difference is matte vs shiny. When it starts to wear or gray just apply another coat. No sanding necessary.  The whole boat can be re-oiled and dry in a few hours.  No muss no fuss, even if it has to be done a little more frequently than varnishing.  We'll see how it holds up in a few months.

I also applied the teak sealer to the handrails and the new toe rails.  Oiling the toe rails before they go on the boat saved me about $40 in masking tape.  That stuff is getting expensive!

There's one more thing I love about this product; notice the Starbright Tropical Teak Oil can.  It has a plastic lid on both ends!  It won't leave a rust ring where it is stored.  Genius Starbright! Mess free from storage to application. What a thoughtful detail.

Thanksgiving Birthday

We have poor internet connectivity right now so the blog is getting neglected.  But we are not behind on the boat! The opening portholes are installed, the exterior wood is refinished, the new toe rails are prepped, and the engine is installed, the interior cabin trim is ready to go, the mast support is in the works, as is the tiller head, and our new mast and boom are ready to be prepped. We have our hands in every project all at once right now.  New posts on the projects coming soon!

 We had a wonderful Thanksgiving work day.  No one was at the yard, it was quiet, cool, and breezy.  The yard is now nearly full of boats with a quick turnover rate. Something I've noticed about boat yards is that everyone likes to talk about what they are doing far more than they like doing it.  We lose about 2 hours of work a day to friendly chit chat.  So one day of interruption free work was refreshing, almost meditative.  Our favorite Taco Truck was open, so we didn't starve on Thanksgiving.  Gracias amigo.  And we did have a pumpkin pie. So we made out pretty well.  Not far from the yard is Vesuvio's, a tiny Italian restaurant with the best pizza I've had since Italy. And they only want $3.99 for two huge slices and a drink.  It can be lunch for 2. We were there the day before Thanksgiving and they were selling pumpkin and apple pies.  I was really happy about this because if I could cook right now, I'd at least have made a pumpkin pie.  I don't care about the turkey, I look forward to pumpkin pie for breakfast.  And AJ's 32nd birthday was the subsequent Saturday, and I couldn't make his favorite pie, mince meat, or his second favorite, apple. So we snagged both pies. I had a marvelous epiphany when I was thinking about the pumpkin pie; not a single ingredient requires refrigeration.  Pumpkin pie for breakfast could be regular thing on the sea...  AJ's apple pie was the best apple pie I've ever had, no contest. Vesuvio's has a tiny magic kitchen, and tiny magic prices. So we had a very happy Thanksgiving and a happy birthday.

Installing the Fixed Windows

AJ here this time. We've installed the two fixed cabin windows.  The original windows were heavy laminated glass with a split in the middle.  They were set inside the cutout, and sandwiched in place between wood trim inside and out, screwed in with the tiniest screws I've seen.  Seriously, they were wood threaded versions of laptop case screws.

This time we are making the windows out of 3/8" acrylic, and oversizing them 1" all around, so we have a lip to through-bolt them to the cabin.  The fastening is much stronger, and the resulting glazed area is about 1/2" bigger all around.

We decided to reuse the screw holes from the old inside trim, so we plugged the outer trim screw holes with a bit of wood colored epoxy from the inside and figured the caulk would make up the difference on the outside.  I made a cardboard drilling template for four of the corner screws and the cutout hole and centered it on the new window.  Problem one arose when I realized that I wouldn't be able to line up the cutout line on the template without being able to see through the glass.  The acrylic comes with both sides covered with a protective opaque film that I wanted to leave on through the process to prevent scratching the window.  Careful hands and masking tape would have to be the solution.  If we were drilling a fresh bolting pattern into the window and boat, then we could have used the films as the caulk masking with careful trimming.

The four holes and the 1" overlap lined up perfectly and allowed me to screw the window on to match and drill all the other holes.  All the screws are countersunk so we can finish this on the outside with a teak trim ring.  I only drilled the fiberglass cabin roof holes big enough to provide a threaded fit for the machine screws.  Acorn nuts will be on the inside.

Then every surface that the overflowing caulk can get on is taped to allow clean(ish) lines when the final fillet is made.

Apparently fixing windows in this way can cause the caulk seal to break after years of different expansion/contraction sizes and rates between the acrylic window and the fiberglass (or wood, or steel, or aluminum) boat.  This is my little addition: neoprene washers.  My (hopeful) fix is to put neoprene washers on every screw to create a tiny gap for the caulk to fill, allowing a more flexible final seal.  The upshot of this is that all the screws are already held stiff in place and they all lined up with their holes perfectly when the final affixing was done, allowing the window to be easily and consistently squished into place without wandering.

This may look like excess (and it is) but I wanted to make sure that the gap got filled.  We actually didn't put down too much more than it needed in the end.  The product we used was 3M 4000 UV.  Not nearly 5200, and not quite 4200.  This promises a more flexible seal and the best UV resistance and for deck hardware and windows, and it won't rip your boat apart when it comes time to remove the stuff.

For this vertical project, I was appreciative how stiff it is.  It didn't run like 5200 does, and it wasn't quite as gooey/sticky either, so clean up was much easier.  But my forearms were so pumped from pumping that damn pump that pumping the last few pumps was near impossible.

The neoprene washers proved useful as a gap gauge.  You could observe their expanding diameter when compressed and estimate an equal caulk seam thickness at each screw, plus they bedded in very well with no air pockets that I could see.  We will pull and bed each screw in caulk individually after it cures. Another good part about a 1/16-1/32" caulk seam, is that we can clamp it just a bit tighter when we re-install each screw to (hopefully) prevent any peel effect with eventual shrinkage.

After clean up.  Yeah, there are some wandering lines where we didn't quite get the caulk seam right, and had to try and clean it up after the tape pulled off, but it came out pretty nice. (and the trim should cover the rest)

Acorn nuts on the inside is our current level of finish.  We are considering a stainless trim ring, both to reinforce the area and to prevent waviness between screws when we re-tighten them with caulk bedding.  It will also allow us to remove the three-washers-per screw needed to allow the acorn nuts without having to grind the tip of each one.  Don't worry about the water marks around the screws I tell myself, they were just put there with the last cleaning before install.  A touch of sanding  and some varnish and everything will look perfect-ish.

You can see a a small patch I made to the inside teak fascia before the install.  I hope it will varnish up to a similar color, but with 20 years of age, and likely the Pacific ocean and South China Sea between the two trees, I'm not sure it will.  Maybe it'll age fast being right over the stove.  Or maybe the inside fascia is some random south east Asian hardwood.  We may never know.

Beat

OK, where did we leave off? Sandy flooded the apartment, and we were going to install the rudder, finish the engine installation and move to the dock at the apartment to finish the rest.  I had a sense of foreboding when I wrote that, tinged with dread.  Just when we think we've caught a break, everything changes.  What is true today is never true tomorrow in this process.  The near-daily reevaluation is more exhausting than boat work.   We are delayed by homeless again.  We didn't get to spend this week plumbing the engine, we spent it moving.  Everything.  Again.  Since moving off the boat for the refit, I think we've spent more time moving or looking for lodging than we have on the refit.  At least it feels that way.

We couldn't move back into the apartment immediately because the landlord had to wait a week for his insurance adjuster to show up and inspect.  During that wait, he decided it would be best if we didn't move back in so he could refurnish the place for his December guests.  He gave us our November rent back, and we didn't argue.

We don't have a dock to take the boat to anymore, so we're staying on the hard this month to make the boat move-aboard ready by doing all the things that require toxic curing chemicals first. Windows, toe rails, bulkheads, and moldy locker cleaning/painting are next on the menu. Sunday we cleaned out the boat, sorted and organized. Yesterday we started the windows.  Tomorrow.. well I'm not going to say.  Because I don't want to jinx it.  I've already said too much.