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78 catalina windows

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stang9150
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USA
138 Posts

Initially Posted - 03/06/2014 : 12:48:48

Is there a write up for the Catalina direct window kit? I heard the instructions that come with it are not that good? I have the old style aluminum frames has anyone used butyl tape to bed the windows? Thanks

Edited by - on

OJ
Master Marine Consultant

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USA
4382 Posts

Response Posted - 03/06/2014 : 16:35:24

http://www.sailnet.com/forums/gear-maintenance/63554-bedding-deck-hardware-butyl-tape.html

Edited by - on

OJ
Master Marine Consultant

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USA
4382 Posts

Response Posted - 03/06/2014 : 16:37:47

http://www.pbase.com/mainecruising/nfm_port_lights

Edited by - on

DavidBuoy
Admiral

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USA
707 Posts

Response Posted - 03/07/2014 : 06:11:52

I did this earlier in the year. The instructions were most likely done by an 8 year old but you can get the important information from them. They are helpful to have but really all you have to do is the opposite from what you did taking the windows apart. If you get on a roll you can have this done in one day.

Edited by - on

stang9150
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USA
138 Posts

Response Posted - 03/07/2014 : 08:43:56

Thanks for the advice this will be my next project,tired of wet cushions.

Edited by - on

OJ
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4382 Posts

Response Posted - 03/07/2014 : 11:20:17

Believe mine leaked between the glass and frame more than between the frame and the cabin top.

Edited by - on

oldragbaggers
1st Mate

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USA
47 Posts

Response Posted - 03/17/2014 : 18:46:14

I don't think I would use butyl tape for the windows. I built a teardrop camper last year and used butyl tape to seal by opening vent and a few other parts. The stuff never "cures" and will continually ooze out. It will also dry out after a time. It's just my 2 cents, but I would stick with 3M, either 4200 or 5200 (we prefer the latter). I have installed windows and many other things using 5200 and if you do a good job of it, it will not leak and it will be a long time before you have to do it again.

Edited by - on

islander
Master Marine Consultant

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USA
3992 Posts

Response Posted - 03/18/2014 : 05:04:41

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"> I have installed windows and many other things using 5200 and if you do a good job of it, it will not leak and it will be a long time before you have to do it again.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">

Edited by - on

Stinkpotter
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Djibouti
9013 Posts

Response Posted - 03/18/2014 : 07:14:30

Hmmmmmmm... I can tell you from personal experience that if you ever need to remove something bedded to fiberglass with 5200, it will very likely remove some of the gelcoat from the laminate. Knives, solvents, torches,... you can try them, but you'll probably end up exasperated. Except for permanent, structural joints like hull-to-deck and keel-to-bottom, 5200 should not be used on a boat. Future owners will curse anyone who does. I've heard other opinions, but that's mine.

Edited by - Stinkpotter on 03/18/2014 07:15:23

Stu Jackson C34
Admiral

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844 Posts

Response Posted - 03/18/2014 : 10:04:02

Dave's right.

5200 is SATAN'S GLUE

It should not be sold to unsuspecting boaters.

Edited by - Stu Jackson C34 on 03/18/2014 10:04:31

jduck00
Captain

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USA
313 Posts

Response Posted - 03/18/2014 : 10:19:32

I did the windows using the kit from Catalina Direct last season. They still leak between the gasket and the frame. I've ordered some structural window sealant and I'm going to glue the glass to the frame. Haven't done that just yet, but its real close to the top of the list. The leaks are a lot less than before, but drip, drip, drip on the counter and the table I just rebuilt are about to make me lose my mind. I was that redneck at the marina that had a camo tarp on the boat all winter.

Edited by - on

oldragbaggers
1st Mate

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USA
47 Posts

Response Posted - 03/18/2014 : 10:27:08

Betcha Satan's windows don't leak.....
Just sayin'

Becky

Edited by - oldragbaggers on 03/18/2014 10:28:10

islander
Master Marine Consultant

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USA
3992 Posts

Response Posted - 03/18/2014 : 13:46:45

Yea they will, Caulk or bedding compounds don't last forever..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnQG7eUyHxU

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Dave5041
Former Mainsheet Editor

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USA
3754 Posts

Response Posted - 03/18/2014 : 15:03:39

I've been dry and happy since redoing mine. Grab rails refinished and rebedded. Now, the genoa track.

Edited by - on

sdpinaz
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USA
193 Posts

Response Posted - 03/18/2014 : 16:30:08

Dave,
what did you use to rebed the grab rails? that is a project I am working on now. I have the grab rails off and am refinishing them as we speak.

on another note, what about any of the sikaflex products, how do they compare to the 3M products, are they comparable or just junk?

Edited by - on

OJ
Master Marine Consultant

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USA
4382 Posts

Response Posted - 03/18/2014 : 16:46:10

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by oldragbaggers
 . . . I would stick with 3M, either 4200 or 5200 (we prefer the latter). . .
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">Now ya did it . . .

Edited by - OJ on 03/18/2014 16:46:52

oldragbaggers
1st Mate

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USA
47 Posts

Response Posted - 03/18/2014 : 19:06:17

Did what, OJ? Open a can of worms maybe? Quick, pass me the 5200 and I'll glue that bad boy shut again!!

It was a very strange coincidence, but I got an email this morning from a guy in California that owns a 24' Bristol that we rebuilt years ago. He just thought we might want to know she was for sale since we have tried to keep up with the boat over the years. (I wish.....) One of the projects we had done was take out the old fixed windows, close up the openings and cut new holes to install stainless steel opening ports. The ports were installed with 5200. So when I responded to his email, after reading this thread, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to ask, "any problems with the windows leaking?" He said he had replaced the window gasketing once, but otherwise they were dry as a bone. They were installed in 1998. Now I understand that if one of them ever got broken or something and needed to be removed there would be the devil to pay. (Hmmmm....maybe that's why Stu called it Satan's glue.) BUT, them darn ports are in there good and after 16 years they still ain't leakin'.

Becky

Edited by - oldragbaggers on 03/18/2014 19:07:47

OJ
Master Marine Consultant

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USA
4382 Posts

Response Posted - 03/18/2014 : 19:17:09

Becky

<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">There's been a long running commentary here about the permanency of 5200. If you would ever want to remove a piece of hardware in the future, don't use 5200. You will most like damage whatever you are trying to remove do to its tenacity. One post stated they pulled gel coat off the cabin top

Edited by - OJ on 03/18/2014 19:17:57

Stinkpotter
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Djibouti
9013 Posts

Response Posted - 03/18/2014 : 19:20:33

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by oldragbaggers
 BUT, them darn ports are in there good and after 16 years they still ain't leakin'.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">...and they probably didn't leak for her first 16 years, either.

Eventually stuff like that has to come apart... I'm a polysulfide fan (e.g. BoatLife Life Caulk). And I doubt even Satan uses 5200 as a bedding compound!

(Did we warn you about strong opinions around here? They're usually civilized...

)

Edited by - on

pastmember
Master Marine Consultant

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2402 Posts

Response Posted - 03/19/2014 : 16:25:23

It is rare to have a need to remove the hull to deck joint, it is not rare to have to remove a window or other bedded hardware.

Edited by - on

stang9150
Navigator

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USA
138 Posts

Response Posted - 04/06/2014 : 21:04:01

Well I manged to pull a window today and it is not good.

The previous owner did not use any gaskets just a whole bunch of silicone to seal the windows. I have a huge gap when the window came out that he tried to fill with expanding foam and some type of automotive weather stripping.
I guess he hoped the foam would fill the gap where all the wood rotted away,because I don't think that gap is normal maybe I'm wrong?

My plan is to cut some ply wood and slide it to the gap and seal it up. What a mess!

[URL="http://s1319.photobucket.com/user/stang9150/media/IMG_0665_zpse187167d.jpg.html"]

[/URL]

[URL="http://s1319.photobucket.com/user/stang9150/media/IMG_0660_zps49af2e61.jpg.html"]

[/URL]

(edited by Admin to fix the urls, missing the quotes, and space the text)

Edited by - on

Tomas Kruska
Admiral

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Czech Republic
522 Posts

Response Posted - 04/07/2014 : 01:35:06

The inner and outer fiberglass just delaminated and the wooden plywood core is rotten and gone.

There was a cool web site with such repair on [url="http://members.csinet.net/dhapp/page1.html"]this site[/url] (Catalina 25 - hull 29) but its offline now

Basically, he removed as much of that rotten wood as he could and then injected the thickened epoxy. Then he compressed the inner and outer side with the vertical planks to create an even thickness of the windows opening to about the original width.

It's a bit time consuming, but worth a job. No more leak into the wooden core. He also confessed that this fix stiffened the sidewalks.

PS: Just found [url="https://picasaweb.google.com/mrapkins/BoatWork"]another documentation[/url] of this job, but If your window frames are ok, I would keep the original look.

Good luck

Edited by - Tomas Kruska on 04/07/2014 01:58:09

Ape-X
Admiral

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USA
662 Posts

Response Posted - 04/07/2014 : 03:49:49

Buy another tube of the silicone, and use twice as much as the instructions say. Neighbor redid using the kit, still leaked. Redid with more caulk, voila.

Edited by - on

mrapkins
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USA
124 Posts

Response Posted - 04/07/2014 : 07:16:18

Here's the article I wrote for my sailing club.

Leaky to Dry In A Few Days

The Catalina 25 is a fine vessel but the early models (mine is a 1985) suffered from notoriously leaky aluminum-framed windows. On Papillion, my C25, we had already removed and re-bedded 2 windows but one of the re-bedded windows was still leaking and another original window was also leaking. Clearly something would have to be done.

So, one bright and sunny Thursday morning, work began. I arrived at the boat and within 25 minutes I had all the old windows removed. It was astonishing to see so little so little of sealant in place, that is, if you can call it sealant. It looked more akin to plumber's putty! I set to work cleaning the ragged window openings. After about 2 hours, all the windows were free of “sealant” and silicone caulk apparently left over from another re-bedding attempt made by the previous owner.

As part of my research into window replacement, I had discovered that boat manufacturers are now using only a high-performance adhesive/sealant to install windows. The product they are using is called Dow 795. With this product, no mechanical fasteners are necessary, in fact, the performance of this product is so good that it is used to secure glass windows into high-rise buildings! This performance, and the fact that it costs only costs $6.95 a tube is why it has been widely adopted by both the construction and boat-building industries. As you can see on modern boats, no mechanical fasteners are used to attach acrylic windows, but the manufacturers have cunning methods to clamp the windows in place until the caulk cures. In addition, the window sits in a recess. However, I needed a way to prevent the window from sliding down the cabin side, and to uniformly “clamp” the window to the curved sides. I decided to use screws.

The cabin sides of a C25 are not very substantial, consisting of about 1/2” of exterior fiberglass and then loose plywood “shims” separating the sides from the liner. Illustration 1 shows the ragged openings that appeared to have been cut out with a jigsaw operated by a monkey with a hangover.

In order to use screws, the entire periphery of the window openings had to be reinforced with epoxy

We mixed up some epoxy and then thickened it with filler to obtain a consistency of peanut butter and coaxed it into a disposable caulk tube. Getting the epoxy into the gap in the bottom of the window openings was straightforward, but getting it into the top was another matter. I injected the epoxy and my colleague encouraged it to stay by pushing drips back up into the gaps until the epoxy began to set. It was messy and definitely a 2-person job.

We then used the old window frames to create plywood templates that would be used to define the shape of the new windows. We made the templates larger than the existing exterior frames in order to provide an overlap that would allow us to position the screw holes further away from the edges of the acrylic and the window opening. The size of the upper overlap was somewhat compromised by the placement of snaps used to attach the pop-top cover, but I considered that allowing the window to encroach to within an 1/8” of the snaps would leave clearance to attach the cover and still provide enough overlap to keep the screw holes away from the edge of the window. (In Illustration 1 the snaps can clearly be seen as little black dots in a row above the window opening.).

It was now around 3 o'clock and we decided to call it a day. Before leaving, we used special duct tape, (designed to be left in place for long periods without leaving residue after removal), to tape plastic sheeting over the windows to create a water-tight seal. We concluded that the plastic sheeting and duct tape had already improved the water-tightness of the boat!

Day 2 In the Workshop

The next day I fabricated the windows from a large sheet of 3/16” acrylic. Throughout the fabrication process I was careful to keep in place the protective paper covering both sides of the acrylic. Using my table saw and jigsaw I cut out the replacement windows using the templates and used my disc sander to fair the rounded corners. The freshly cut edges were then sanded with my random orbit sander using 220 grit paper and I used a small propane torch to polish the edges.

Day 3 Saturday, back to the boat.

The epoxy used to reinforce the openings had set up somewhat lumpy so the first thing we did was fair them using my random orbit sander with 80 grit sandpaper. It was now even more apparent that the openings were far from regular with the longer openings having “straight” edges undulating by up to 1/2”, remember the monkey? With the openings fair, we made more plywood templates, this time of the openings. These would be used to fabricate the trim rings that I was planning to make to hide the ragged edges.

In order to center the windows in the openings I came up with the brilliant idea of drawing vertical and horizontal index lines on the inside protective paper of each window, as shown in Illustration 2. With me in the cabin and my colleague moving the window around outside, we carefully centered the window in the opening. We then traced the outline of the window opening onto the protective paper which allowed us to clearly see the overlap and consequently position the screw holes the correct distance from the edge of the acrylic and the window opening. The holes were drilled using a bit (specifically designed for plastics) mounted in my drill press, which we clamped to the tailgate of wife's pickup truck. After drilling the holes I used a utility knife to trace the window-opening line on the inside of the window and removed the protective paper, exposing the area of the window that would be adhered to the cabin sides (the overlap). The exposed edge of the acrylic was then scuff sanded in order to ensure good adhesion with the sealant. While I was doing this, my colleague was applying masking tape to the exterior of the cabin side all around the window opening.

We then positioned the window over the opening and, using a special self-centering “Vix” drill bit, we drilled two pilot holes into the cabin side and used 2 screws to allow us to temporarily mount the window in place. We then drilled all the other pilot holes and traced around the exterior of the window with a utility knife using just enough pressure to cut through the masking tape and not cut the gel coat. We removed the masking tape exposing the area of the cabin side to which the window would be adhered (the overlap). This area was also scuff sanded. If you have been able to follow the masking and cutting process, we now have the interior side of the window (where a lot of squeeze-out will occur) still covered with protective paper, and the exterior side of the cabin (where a lot of squeeze-out will occur) still covered with masking tape, and two perfectly matching scuff-sanded areas (the overlap) that will form the area of the bond between the cabin side and the window.

The Messy Part

It was now time to install the windows. Had we just been using a screw and washer to attach the window this would have been fairly straightforward, but we wanted to place a neoprene “spacer” washer between the window and the cabin side in order to prevent all the caulk from being squeezed out; having the spacer allows the window to remain about 1/32” away from the cabin side and form a solid (no voids) “gasket” of caulk between the window and the cabin side. This solid gasket ensures no leaks and additionally it completely hides the white cabin side. (If the caulk squeezes out completely it allows the white cabin side to become visible through the acrylic which detracts from the professional look we were trying to achieve).

The difficulty with this approach was trying to place the screw, the washer, and the neoprene spacing washer into each hole and then applying the caulk and then carrying the assembly up a ladder without losing any screws or washers, and then correctly positioning the window on the cabin side so that all the screws lined up with the pilot holes we had drilled previously. We found the best way to do this was to slide the window around on two of the boat's hatch boards so that as a hole passed over the gap between the hatch boards we could insert the screw and washer and then slide the screw up onto the hatch board so it would not fall out, and then place the neoprene spacer washer over the now-protruding screw threads. With all the screws protruding we applied a generous bead of caulk all around the window looping a bead of caulk around the screw threads to hold the screws, washers and spacers in place for their journey from the ground up the ladder to the boat. Once the first few screws were in things went fairly smoothly. We were careful not to over-tighten the screws. We did find that leaving the window in place overnight and allowing the caulk to set and then removing the masking tape/protective paper made for much easier clean up.

For the inside of the cabin I used the window-opening templates in order to fabricate some Cherry Trim Rings. These were designed to hide the ragged openings and really gave the project that “finished” look. Perhaps if I did not have the wood working equipment to make the Trim Rings I would have settled on just painting the epoxy filler that I used to fill the space between the inside of the cabin and the hull.

So, here is the big question. Was it worth it? It certainly was. Gone are the wet cabin cushions and floors, and anything that we stored on the shelves. What's more, this project makes my might boat look 10 years younger.

Resources

Acrylic for windows
Total Plastics
5424 Pulaski Highway
Baltimore, MD 21205-3407
(410) 483-1122
www.totalplastics.com
Dow 795
Kenseal Construction
2960 Washington Boulevard
Baltimore, MD 21230-1141
(410) 646-5801
www.kenseal.com
Neoprene washers
The Home Depot

Edited by - mrapkins on 04/07/2014 07:19:02

stang9150
Navigator

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USA
138 Posts

Response Posted - 04/07/2014 : 10:33:27

This picture shows how he used the silicone inside the frame to try to seal it.

[URL=http://s1319.photobucket.com/user/stang9150/media/IMG_06681_zps82a0af84.jpg.html]

[/URL]
[URL=http://s1319.photobucket.com/user/stang9150/media/IMG_06671_zps0aa84c02.jpg.html]

[/URL]

Edited by - on

Dave5041
Former Mainsheet Editor

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USA
3754 Posts

Response Posted - 04/07/2014 : 11:04:23

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Dave,
what did you use to rebed the grab rails? that is a project I am working on now. I have the grab rails off and am refinishing them as we speak.

on another note, what about any of the sikaflex products, how do they compare to the 3M products, are they comparable or just junk?
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">

Yep, you did open it. Urethanes, 5200 & 4200, are adhesives, not bedding compounds. Polysufide is the compound of choice.
It is slow and relatively expensive, but 20-30 years life, permanent flexibility, easy removal and ten years later you can just tighten a screw to compress it a little more
to cure a leak. Do it right and you'll be happy. Sika makes products as good as 3M, so choosing the appropriate product is more important than the brand. Check the
West Marine article base for info about sealants, caulks, and bedding compounds and read Don Casey.

I also had a gap between the liner and cabin sides, but it wasn't rot. There were dry, solid plywood shims between the skins, only the deck and cabin top were cored.
I used the 4200 that CD included in the kit to bond and seal the gap. If I get a leak now, it will drip into the cabin instead of the bilge so I'll know about it immediately.

Edited by - on

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