Friday, August 10, 2012

I can see clearly now...

I've sung the praises of Meguiar's products before.  They really are magic for plastic. 

While anchored in Blind Bay, on the North side of Shaw Island on Sunday, I felt the need to take on a small boat project (not fully in the vacation mindset yet).  And the vinyl in our dodger was looking sort of cloudy.  You know, it comes on so gradually that you really don't notice the change, but eventually it gets bad enough that some threshold is crossed and you say, "Wow - the windows are dirty!"

So I got out the Meguiar's.  Because the vinyl is soft, I elected to use the #10, which is a polish.  It does contain a small amount of abrasive, but it is ground ultra-fine.  The results were amazing.  I'm pretty sure I don't have to tell you which side I worked on in the picture...  The ten-year old vinyl looks like it did when it was new.

We have a small mushroom vent in the overhead above the galley - sadly this vent is located under the dodger, just out ot the picture to the right.  Tho it does a pretty good job of getting cooking fumes out of the galley, in the winter when the cockpit canvas is all closed up and it is cold, those fumes condense on the inside of the dodger, including on the vinyl.  Since the inside of the vinyl windows was far dirtier than the outside, I believe that it was condensed galley fumes and the bacterial colonies that were making a living on them that I removed.

You know what is lacking in the marine product world?  A good 12V marine alternative to the household kitchen vent fan and household bathroom vent fan.  Any manufacturer out there listening?

Of course, now that I've done one window, the others look all the worse...
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have dorade vent in the head, that I equipped with a fan I cut down the square frame on a muffin fan, and it fits nicely into the round dorade. It is wired to a 12 volt circuit, and draws virtually nothing from the house bank...I usually don't leave it on for long periods of time, but in the gray and gloomys..it works great to suck out moisture from the shower stall.

Jack
T37 Interlude

Deb said...

When I do people's canvas repair with windows here on the lake I use Maguire's Ultimate Compound for the polish and then Dupont's Spray Teflon wax for a protectant. You're right - the Maguire's is magic. We also use their headlight restorer on our port lenses periodically to polish them.

Deb
S/V Kintala
www.theretirementproject.blogspot.com

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