The window frames of our vintage GB are installed from the outside and held to the cabin side with screws and an adhesive bedding compound. When we started reworking all the windows in the boat we used putty knives, high E guitar strings, and other self-invented techniques to get the frames off and old track out after the screws had been removed. Not always an easy job.
Then a shipwright friend, seeing what we were doing one day, showed us the tool he uses for this same task. It's a rotary deglazing tool and it's turned what once used be a long and tedious job with the risk of breaking the frame into not quite a snap but the next thing to it. We've been using it for some ten years now as we overhaul one or two windows a year and it has made a major difference in the ease of doing the job.
And when we reinstall an overhauled frame, we do not use an adhesive bedding compound which means if we ever have to take that frame off again, it will be no job at all.
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