Sliding Doors

Any suggestions on replacement/rebuild for the two aft and side entrance sliding doors for 34LRC ?

Capt Q said:

Any suggestions on replacement/rebuild for the two aft and side entrance sliding doors for 34LRC ?

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Are they not working with the lift/shuffle?

They are splitting at the jointed area's,

wish i had a solution for you

are/where they varnished/painted or just raw wood.
mine are well varnished and covered.. no problems at the moment - got me looking though

Varnished, Alaska is Very Wet & Damp,, Ill send pictures soon, the front cabin doors dried out and the glue failed at the joints& , had them repaired, these are wet rotten

I had a wooden sliding door on a previous boat that was starting to go bad. I made a whole new one out of 1” Starboard. Routed the area for the glass and set a piece of glass in a silicone gasket. Routed a groove in the bottom and put a strip of UHMW on the base of the area as a slide for the Starboard door to slide on. Worked great, no leaks and no maintenance.

Can you post some pictures?
Tks

Comodave said:

I had a wooden sliding door on a previous boat that was starting to go bad. I made a whole new one out of 1” Starboard. Routed the area for the glass and set a piece of glass in a silicone gasket. Routed a groove in the bottom and put a strip of UHMW on the base of the area as a slide for the Starboard door to slide on. Worked great, no leaks and no maintenance.

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Pictures would be really appreciated. Please!

I have a pilothouse door that is cracked in several places and the plywood core is delaminated.

Starboard sounds less time consuming than a glass over plywood replacement.

I'm curious about the silicone gasket for the glass. I thought nothing sticks to Starboard?

Thanks comodave

Wish I had photos but that boat was about 6 boats ago. I took 1” thick Starboard and cut a square hole in it for the window. I then routed a rabbit around the hole so that the inside edge of the rabbit would be say 3/4” tall. Then I bedded the glass in the rabbit so that the glass was floating on the silicone. The silicone may not stick so that is why the inside of the rabbit was so tall. After the glass was set in the silicone I put strips around the window on the outside and screwed them on. Filled the edge around the window with more silicone so that there was a U shaped gasket around the glass. The key so that it didn’t leak was to make the outside strips only 1/2” above the original square cutout. That way the inside was 3/4” tall and the outside was only 1/2” tall. Even if the silicone eventually came loose from the Starboard any water would run out over the 1/2” tall strip on the outside. I will make a drawing and upload it so it will be easier to visualize. I cut a dado in the bottom of the door and made a slider strip for the bottom of the door jamb out of UHMW plastic so it would slide easily.

I did a rough drawing of what I remember on how I made the door. Starboard is really nice since you never have to finish it.

Comodave,

Any issues with the starboard stretching or warping with heat?

Thanks.

I have never had any. If you use it in a horizontal application without support it will sag, but vertically there should be no issue. I never had any problem with my door.

The UHMW T track is a good idea. Any wear on either the UHMW or Starboard?

My current door has an UHMW strip attached to the bottom and rides on a teak T track. They seem to wear evenly.

I wasn't sure which was denser so I googled it and Starboard was slightly denser than UHMW. I'm not a scientist so may have read incorrectly.

I think UHMW is harder. I made the dado equal in depth to the height of the raised part of the UHMW strip. That way it was riding on all 3 areas of the door bottom. I never noticed any wear but then again you typically don’t open and close a boat door that much in the scheme of things.

I like Dutch doors.

Capt Q, the factory dowel joints are a marginal method of joinery which is why they fail and allow joint movement.
The top and bottom joints on both of my helm doors were moving like yours. I elected to use a router to create mortise pockets for loose tenons that were epoxied in to stabilize the joints. Four years now and zero movement / finish failure at the joint.
I just had the south facing door in the shop for it's bi-annual recoat. If you're interested I chronicled the door rebuild here on TF.