Ted,
Silicone RTV caulk is not you best choice. It has low adhesion properties therefore it is easy to break the seal and develop a leak. A poly sulfide marine caulk is much better adhesion. There are a few good ones out there. 3M 4200 would be one good choice. I like silicone caulk for sealing around thinks like marine speakers or instruments that don't do any work on the boat. It makes servicing or changing them in the future much easier. I like to use the tooth pick approach whenever bedding deck hardware to help mold a true gasket. The gasket needs to be resilient to stand up to the rigors of sailing. When a piece of hardware is stressed one side of the gasket will often be compressed while the other side stretched. The stretching side is where the silicone's low adhesion lets it fail but any caulk can be ripped loose if it is too thin to stretch. Paper thin caulking rips with paper thin motion. I look to mold a 1/16" thick gasket by cutting round tooth picks in half as spacers so you can loosely assemble the hardware onto the wet caulk without squeezing it too thin. Once the caulking is set you remove the tooth picks, tighten the hardware, and touch up as required. It strikes me applying a 1/16" bead around the each hole on the teak hand rail and allowing that to dry completely before doing a loose assembly with wet caulking to form the full size gasket could accomplish the same thing. Bring some toothpicks just in case the hand rail needs to be sprung in place, as it might crush the 1/16th bead at the first point on contact. One word of caution - 3M5200 (a marine wooden boat adhesive) should be avoided on a fiberglass boat. It will be next to impossible to remove the teak in the future without breaking the teak or ripping up gel coat if 3M5200 is used. Phil Agur Capitol City N-Trak - All DCC - Sacramento, CA Mid Century N- California - SP, WP, SF, UP, TWS, and others. http://www.capitolcityntrak.org/ http://www.cuttergraphics.com/N-trak/ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2010 7:42 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [IC27A] (no subject) Hello all, I have removed the teak hand rails to refinish then. When re installing, I was going to use clear silicone to re bed them. What is the best technique to use? I could apply the silicone and replace the rail when the silicone is still wet or is it best to let a ring of silicone dry on the hull around the screw hole and then place the rail after it completely dry. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Ted Pinelli
