Polishing the Portholes

[stwendl]

I thought that expression "polishing the portholes" was only used by sailors in movies like "down periscope" to describe a less military action 🙂

 

[DBBRanger]

I just discovered online somewhere that lemon peal and salt does the trick. It is amazing how easy and thorough it works. I have been using Brasso before, but that takes a bit of scrubbing and time. This works instantly with no scrubbing. Of course, my ports are pretty clean already so I don't know how well it would work on highly oxidized ports.

 

[sheral]

Can you share the lemon peel and salt concoction with us? 😀

 

[DBBRanger]

Can you share the lemon peel and salt concoction with us? 😀

Nothing complicated: Use half a lemon peel, add salt, wipe on and wipe off as suggested here:
http://www.boatus.com/magazine/archives/savebigtime.asp

I took a salt shaker and shook the salt onto the lemon. Expect to have lemon bits everywhere. Wiping off doesn't work too well - you can't get it all off. So next time I will flush it off with a hose. I am also going to try lemon juice and salt on a rag or sponge. Don't know if that will work or not. I also wiped the porthole with Never Dull afterwards thinking the shine would last longer. I don't think that worked.

Another thing I have done to keep the portholes looking good is to add a cover over them when the boat is not in use. I made covers from a rubberized dog dish I found at Walmart. I screwed a wood dowel on the inside of the dish in the middle of it pointing out of the dish. Then I attached a suction cup to the dowel. So I put the dish over the porthole, push on the dish in the center to attach the suction cup to the glass and it stays covering the porthole. I also attached a thin string to the suction cup and let it hang down along the boat outside of the dish so that I can release the suction cup when I want to remove the cover. They stay on quite nicely but I wouldn't put them on while the boat is in the water!

 

[Two killicks]

I have found a way to save time to shine the portholes, remove the nuts on the outside and the screws on the inside, the surface is now flat, no more going around the nut to apply your favorite product. I did 3 portholes with the nuts in place, took me an hour each, for the last porthole with the nuts removed, 40 minutes. it was the first time in 4 years that they were done, the previous owner liked it this way.