Regasketing SJ24 Portlights

What Not To Do

• On reassembly, don't try to force the frame halves for the V-berth portlights together using a woodworker's vise. Bad idea! I cracked one of mine, and decided that I'd better take the job to a glass shop.

• Don't take the job to Aloha Glass in Aloha, Oregon! These people are just flat-out incompetent. For $50 they:
  • Replaced my cracked glass with a piece that was the wrong tint.
  • Worse, it was laminated from two pieces of 1/8-inch stock, making a thickness of 1/4 inch. (The proper glass is 3/16 thick.)
  • They ground the faces of the new piece to make it fit the frame channel.
  • Now the gasket wouldn't fit, so they cut it down the middle and filled the space on the inside of the frame with silicone caulk.
  • Must've been too loose then, so they tried to peen the outer side of the flange to tighten it up.
  • For the rest of the portlights they just slapped 'em together in the most hideous gap-filled mess one could imagine.

  In retrospect, last time I dealt with these folks I bought a dozen sheets of single-strength window glass to use in building doors for my bookshelves, and in the middle of the stack I found a sheet that was broken into three or four pieces. Sure, maybe I dropped the whole stack and just the one in the middle broke... yeah.

What To Do

Here are a few tips I worked out, for whatever they might be worth:

• Make sure the insides of the channels in the frames are as clean and smooth as possible so the gasket can slide in without snagging.
• Soaking in kerosene softens up the remnants of the tarlike original frame-to-cabin sealant after the bulk of it has been scraped away
• Stretching the gasket around the outside of the glass as tightly as possible helps it slip into the frame... whether it will contract and create a gap over time remains to be seen, but if you don't get it tight enough, the gasket gets pinched where the two halves of the frame join
• For the large cabin portlights, inserting the glass into the top of the frame first seems to make things easier, even though the free ends of the gasket are on that side. (The frames have a slight front-to-back curve to them, and the glass has to flex to conform to it: The curve doesn't seem to be as pronounced on the top, so it's easier to insert and starts the glass bending for the attachment of the bottom of the frame.)
• I found it necessary to tack the center of the bottom-edge gasket for the cabin portlights down before installing, otherwise I ended up with the outside getting dragged into the channel while the inside was pushed out. (Due to the curvature of the frame.) Scott mentioned that the glass shop where he had his work done used tape: I couldn't figure out how I would get the tape out afterward, so I used a small amount of cyanoacrylate glue.
• I tried lubricating things with several different solutions. Surprisingly, what worked best for me was Windex®. Water and dishwashing detergent or boat soap each seemed to make more of a mess and do less for me.
• I used the end of an old toothbrush handle to run around the edges of the installed gasket and seat it where there were small gaps.
• Using a heat gun to warm the plastic filler strips that go on the inside of the frames while gently stretching them removes the "memory" of the corners from the previous installation, and also eliminated the gaps between the ends that had developed as mine contracted over the years.

The Current State

As of 11/9/00 I've reassembled one V-berth portlight and one cabin portlight. I'm about to start cleaning up the second cabin portlight and wanted to write up these hints before I forgot them! (I can't do the second V-berth portlight until I've obtained the proper glass for it.)

I haven't yet decided what to use for the frame-to-cabin seal. Sailboat Hull & Deck Repair by Don Casey recommends silicone, but I've read on the Web that some species of 3M foam weatherstripping that's sticky on both sides is better. On the other hand, the original sticky "tar" caulking seems to have worked just fine for 25 years.