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I'm rebuilding my companion way hatch and I can't find the metal runner strips that the hatch slides on. I think one attaches to the deck and the other to the slide on the hatch? Not sure….and I can't tell from photo's. Is there a place that sells these? Or do I have to make them?
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we don't have these at all on valky.. I keep intending to get some strips of HDPE to install. Right now the wood slides over the gellcoat. Well whats left of it 🙂 been that way at least the last 15 plus years from what I can tell.
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I've got it set-up right now so that it slide on the gelcoat and it is working ok this way. But I've seen pictures of the metal strips that are supposed to be where it slides. Does anyone have a close-up photo of this or know where they can be ordered or the demensions of the strips so I can fabricate new ones?
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I would really get some HDPE over metal.. you can buy really big cutting boards at Sam's Club for about 10 dollars and cut them into strips for doing this, drill holes and counter sink them in the HDPE strips to screw them to the deck and the hatch slides on top of them. I think I just bought one for myself and one as a gift and they were about 10 dollars apiece.
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Great idea. I'll look into it.
Oh, what do you cut it with?
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table saw, jig saw, circular saw, router
basically any wood cutting tools should work. The only issue is heat. don't let it heat up or your blade will probably gum up. Been a while so I'm not sure how much heat tolerance the HDPE has before it does that. I have cut long runs of acrylic with a dribble of water from a hose running over the area I am cutting while cutting it and it makes for clean laser sharp cuts with no melting at all. For me when cutting with water I found a jib saw the best tool as it sits over the cut and water and flings the water the least amount. A board or other straight edge clamped to the cutting board to act as a straight edge to guide the jigsaw will allow for absolutely perfect cuts. Other than that in say a table saw I would do one cut at the time and the let the blade cool down before doing another one to try and keep it from getting hot enough to start melting the material. Once you get melted plastic/acrylic etc.. on your blade the cutting goes down hill till it is cleaned (almost impossible) or replaced (more likely outcome).
The reason I bring this up is that I have a new blade in my table saw because I tried to cut the aforementioned acrylic on it before coming up with the water cooled jigsaw method 🙂 Table saw method not good for table saw blade 🙂 after first long cut or second it started to build up goo that caused more heat and more goo to stick to blade. Before long I couldn't cut much of anything for the blade sticking due to goo on the sides of it making it wider and sticky and did I say goey. Gooey only applies while it is hot, If not hot it is a rather hard and impervious blackened plastic coating on the sides of the blade. It also goes from hard and impervious back to gooey in seconds if attempting to use it again once it has reached this state 🙂
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I will put up some pics, give me a few days though. Oasis's hatch, describing from outside to the centerline, uses an outer bracket made of wood (which keeps water, running on the deck, out of the hatch area), mounted to the deck. Then an aluminum (I am guessing) bar strip that is 1.5" wide cemented to the deck (just measured it.. it is cold outside). This bar runs the length of the hatch side. Then the fiberglass lip of the companionway itself. The wood hatch has a wood foot that slides on this strip. The foot is actually just an L-shape. No real problems with stickiness of the hatch, needs a good tug once in a while, and it does get very dusty & sandy in there sometimes. The hatch I believe is the original wood, fairly heavy.
So I think you could just go get a 1.5" stock bar from the big box store, 1/16" thick or whatever. It doesn't look very "marine-price" special. I guess it is aluminum because it looks fairly oxidized and I have never noticed corrosion or rust on it.
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I put the material on both the hatch and the cabin top, but now the sway or dip the cabin top has in it is causing the hatch to stop because it is putting such a sharp bend in the runners. Does anyone know if the runners are supposed to have shim or something in order to make them run strait without having a curve in them that contours to the cabin top?
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I would take off the strip on the hatch and just leave the one bolted to the cabin top. If you really want to protect the wood from wearing as it slide I would either just paint the wood with some penetrating epoxy to make it wear a lot harder on the bottom surface or maybe even take some epoxy with a filler such as cabosil and paint some on and then clamp a flat bar down over it with some plastic between the bar and the wet epoxy so that after it hardens you can take the bar off and then pull the plastic away and have a very hard slick layer of thickened epoxy to ride against the HDPE bolted to the cabin top. However I have the feeling that the wood itself will last for years and years just against the HDPE.. Mine has been running on the bare jell coat and fiberglass of the cabin top for decades and the wood seems to be eating into the cabin top more than it is destroying the wood 🙂 I will probably do the epoxy reinforcement of mine though whenever I get around to putting a HDPE strip in on the cabin top.
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Thanks Scott. That makes sense. The wood on the hatch rubbing against the HDPE strip would probably last a very long time.
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I will reinforce mine with epoxy, because once it does wear it will not be easily repairable. When I repaired my hatch a year or two ago from a rotted top section of teak ply that was screwed into the solid ply frame I didn't rebuild it the same way. This time I not only screwed the new piece in but used epoxy to glue all the joints. I was worried about the force it was taking to bend the 1/2? 3/4 inch ply I used to replace the teak with and thought I needed the extra strength of the epoxy bond. The original was a laminate of a couple of pieces of thinner ply and would have been easier to bend when it was constructed. If doing it over I would have done the same thing but money was tight and I bought the wood before I dissembled the hatch. I had three projects and bought and had cut one piece of ply for all three. However it is one unit now and though I suppose I could cut off the sides with the slide rails and replace them, it would be tough. Instead, when I upgrade to the HDPE slides I am going to refinish the surface of the whole hatch and lay a 4 or 6 ounce piece of fiberglass in epoxy over the whole thing and then varnish over that. It should be very pretty and just about indestructible. Just scuff and put another coat of varnish on every few years. Even better one of the two part finishes since it will be bonding to an epoxy surface they won't have to worry about de-bonding from a wood substrate.
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