February 17, 2025

Danusia Phase 2-31

Monday

The fine filler had enjoyed a weekend’s cure time, so now I sanded the hull once more as necessary, smoothing the filler and fine-tuning the primed surface with a finishing sander and by hand.  Afterwards, I vacuumed and solvent-washed the hull to remove dust.

I patched a few areas where the masking tape had been scarred during previous steps, then thoroughly cleaned the shop to remove and settle dust.  Once all that was done, I solvent-washed the hull a final time, this time using the proprietary solvent from the paint system.

With some time left in the afternoon, I took a look at the deck hatch frame I’d removed earlier, and tentatively dove in to see about removing the old lens for rebedding.  The lens was surrounded by a large amount of old silicone sealant, which had been ineffective at stemming leakage, apparently.  I cut out the bulk of this sealant with a knife and 5-in-1 tool, and cautiously tested the adhesion of the lens to the frame itself.  I had no problem getting the putty knife beneath, so I loosened the lens from all four edges, then, from underneath, pried the lens off the two crossbars as well, releasing the old acrylic lens intact.

The old lens had been installed over some sort of adhesive foam-based tape on all the bonding surfaces, plus the sealant around the exposed edge.  This was not only ineffective over the long term, but also left residue of the soft tape behind on all surfaces.  It was easy enough to scrape off the metal hatch frame, but would take much more time on the old plastic lens.  I soon determined that a replacement piece of acrylic for the hatch was relatively inexpensive–it was only 1/8″ thick–and that it would be far more economical, not to mention better in the end, to replace the lens with new rather than waste time meticulously removing the old bedding from the faded old lens, and I ordered the replacement.  My time could and would be better (and unavoidably) spent cleaning up the aluminum frame, which was contaminated with the old silicone and would require some work to clean up sufficiently to ensure good bonding of the new materials.    So with a bit more preliminary scraping to remove the worse of the old bedding from the hatch frame, I called it a day for now.

Total time billed on this job today: 5 hours