Back in May, John Teple and I completely rebuilt all eleven bronze portlights on my boat. Quite a few of the portlights would leak during a heavy rain. I finally found out that the water was seeping up over the outer rim, through the sealant around the glass and finally into my cabin. Unacceptable!
This turned out to be quite a project. We had to first remove the old sealant and glass. Not the easiest task. The 30 year old goo was pretty set and not too interested in clearing out. We had to soak the portlights and chisel most of the old sealant out. The inner portlight rims are held in with tiny brass screws that all decided to snap off in their hole instead of going quietly. We ended up drilling out some of the screws and tapping in new holes for all eleven portlights. This resulted in 76 new holes. We bought new safety glass for all the lights and decided that we would go ahead and polish them up since they were off the boat. I spent quite a few hours on the polisher but it resulted in a really beautiful finished product. They have been back on the boat for a few months and are leak free. A big thanks to John Teple for all his hours invested in this project!
