The work on the hatches is slow and painful. Cleaning up the aluminum has been a not-so-fun job but its very necessary. The good news is that our acrylic arrived and its perfect!
The one thing that still needed to be done was the rounding of each of the four corners to exactly match the old acrylic and fit into the hatch frame. I was slightly unsure of this job because I have never cut corners on acrylic before. We don’t have a router but we do have the router kit for the Dremel tool so that is what I decided to go with.
First I traced the old acrylic onto the new acrylic to get an exact match.
The Dremel did the job and I was once again thankful to have this little tool around. I’m sure we could have gotten a slightly more perfect result with a proper router but I was impressed with the Dremel none the less.
I then cleaned the frame with Bar Keepers Friend and a toothbrush.
Then I cleaned it again with a wire brush.
I then cleaned it again with Acetone using a punch wrapped in a towel for pressure to get down into the tight grooves.
After all the aluminum was cleaned I masked the frame with artists tape and cut the brown paper protectant on the acrylic as a mask for the acrylic. We are now ready for the bedding but all my caulk guns are on the boats!!! Hopefully I will be able to lay the sealant sometime within the next few days.
2 thoughts on “Hatches Coming Along”