Replacing Fixed Windows Research [Master Thread]

[mherrcat]

In reference to a previous thread:

http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoexchange/showthread.php?t=9484&highlight=Motion+Windows

I just sent emails to Motion Windows in Vancouver, WA and to USA Marine Windows in Florida to get some prices on fabricating replacement fixed windows for my E30+.

I did get some feedback from someone who had used Motion Windows. (Thanks Loren!)

I would like to hear from anyone who has used USA Marine Windows:

http://www.usamarinewindows.com/

Their website is a little scary, but I like the idea that their window frames are welded and not joined mechanically.

If anyone is interested I have attached the PDF files of the drawings I made from two windows removed from another Ericson. The drawings are full-scale (made by tracing the frames) so if you try to print them at 100% they are going to be large. These are the port side windows; for the starboard you would have to flip the drawings 180 degrees horizontally. From what I have been able to gather, these windows are the same size on almost all Ericsons.

 

[treilley]

Why not Bomon? A few of us here have had ours made by them and are very satisfied. Http://www.Bomon.com

http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoexchange/showthread.php?t=5643&highlight=Bomon

 

[mherrcat]

For some reason I thought Bomon was like Lewmar in that they only had certain sizes available. Will send them the drawings, too. Thanks!

 

[Sven]

For some reason I thought Bomon was like Lewmar in that they only had certain sizes available. Will send them the drawings, too.

Bomon != Bomar.

We need to contact Bomon too. One of our fixed ports leaks and I hate sailing with plastic and blue tape over it

Please post if you talk to them before I do.



-Sven

 

[treilley]

For some reason I thought Bomon was like Lewmar in that they only had certain sizes available. Will send them the drawings, too. Thanks!

Mark, you are thinking of Bomar. They are a production port light manufacturer. Bomon makes custom ports. They are a far superior company. I have dealt with both as all my opening port lights were from bomar.

Bomon is usually at the Maine boat builders show. I have spoken to them a few times in person. Very nice people.

 

[lbertran]

Bomon Fixed Ports

Tim is right. I replaced all of the fixed ports on out boat last Fall with new Bomon fixed ports and we're very happy with the results. They're well made and the installation method seems much sturdier than the original ports. They're great people to deal with, whenever I had reason to communicate with them they replied promptly and knew me and my boat without a lot of explanations.

 

[mherrcat]

Laura,

Since you have experience with Bomon fixed portlights on your E35, were they direct replacements? In other words, did you have to enlarge the cabin cutouts at all? Was it simply a matter of removing the old portlights and dropping the new ones in? I take it your replacements included the large trapezoidal shaped portlights in the main saloon?

 

[Sven]

Just got a quote back from Bomon for <$300 ea. and am placing an order for all four.



-Sve

 

[Sven]

Laura,

Since you have experience with Bomon fixed portlights on your E35, were they direct replacements? In other words, did you have to enlarge the cabin cutouts at all? Was it simply a matter of removing the old portlights and dropping the new ones in? I take it your replacements included the large trapezoidal shaped portlights in the main saloon?

In the response I got back from Bomon they cautioned me that the old holes were manually cut (not using a template) and for that reason the holes could be slightly off. This agrees with what we found when replacing the 7 NFM opening 4*14 portholes/portlights (take your pick). The holes were crudely cut (in comparison to a router cut hole) and then there was a second generation cut that was also crude when the original ones were replaced with plastic opening ones.



-Sven

 

[mherrcat]

I have already removed and rebedded one of the large portlights and the cutout is indeed crude, but I don't think the gap between the cutout and the frame was much more than about 3/16" at the most. In fact, I had to actually enlarge the cutout a little in one spot using a rasp so the frame would drop straight in without having to slide the back end in first then the front end; very hard to do with butyl tape applied to the frame!

 

[treilley]

Bomon can make them the exact size and shape of the old portlights. I had them make mine(from my template) a little bit larger so I could clean up the cutouts and seal the the new edges of the plywood. They emailed me their CAD drawings so I could print them and check for fit.

One note on the angles. They could not recreate the exact same angle of the tightest angle(bottom leading edge of forward port and bottom trailing edge of aft port) so you have to do a little fine tuning there. They still look identical(shaped) to the originals though.

$300 is a great price. That is what I paid for mine 4 years ago.

 

[kevin81]

I replaced mine with Bomon ports 2 years ago. I completely agree with Tim and Laura - I was very satisfied with their service and the product. As Tim did, I had them make them slightly larger than the original openings on my E34.

Kevin
1989 E34

 

[lbertran]

Cut Outs for Bomon Fixed Ports

Hi, Mark-
We had the same experience as Tim, had to do a bit of trimming to match the port radii. I used a good quality saber saw and it was relatively simple.

 

[mherrcat]

I spoke with Alain at Bomon this morning. (Apparently my drawings also got to them via another source...ha! )

He sent me their drawings. Something I do not understand is how the port and starboard sides can have different measurements; it seems like they should be exactly the same just mirror images.

For example, here are the differences in the forward windows for port and starboard:

Width at back: 182mm/186mm
Length: 880mm/872mm

The length is not the actual length of the window but rather where the extensions of the vertical and horizontal lines of the cutout intersect. I'm not an AutoCad expert so I don't know the technical term for this!

I just checked the scavanged frames I have from an E27 and an E35 and they are also slightly different. So this presents a dilemna. It seems I will have to remove ALL FOUR of the trapezoidal windows from my boat to measure the cutouts in order to determine a "standard" size for the aft windows and a "standard" size for the forward windows.

This is turning out to be a real pain...

And a final warning: Don't blame me if my drawings don't fit your boat! Apparently one size does not fit all; they are close, but not exact.

 

[Sven]

I spoke with Alain at Bomon this morning. (Apparently my drawings also got to them via another source...ha! )

He sent me their drawings. Something I do not understand is how the port and starboard sides can have different measurements; it seems like they should be exactly the same just mirror images.

I just sent him my rough drawings a few days ago so he's probably getting quite a collection

I had the same question you did, why are they different on P & S ?

I told him I'd have to re-measure this weekend before placing my order. Do you know if the ones he sent you match yours ? I don't think they quite match ours so we'll just go a little bigger and make them all the same.


-Sven

 

[mherrcat]

I have been playing with my original drawings and the measurements that Alain sent. These are just my observations.

Based on Bomon's numbers the width (front to back) of the aft window remains about the same. The width of the forward window increases about 3/16". The slope of the front of the forward window and the back of the aft window changes because Bomon's 2" radius is larger than the original window radius. The slope becomes a little more shallow, which causes it to move up a little toward the outer ends. (It's really all relative, since you could make the width whatever you want and the 2" radius would then make the angle either steeper or shallower...)

Since Bomon's minimum 2" radius is almost exactly the same as the radius on the 90-degree angles of the original windows it doesn't really affect that end. The measurements they show for the height at those ends are about 3/8" more than mine. (I guess you could make that height whatever you want, too, but at some point the top and bottom become parallel, which is not what the original windows looked like. This is what their #2 drawing looks like.)

The CAD drawing that Bomon sent seems a little rough. (I am viewing it with a free AutoDesk viewer I downloaded earlier.) It would be really nice if someone who has access to CAD software could take Bomon's measurements and that 2" radius and create a nice, tight drawing of each of the windows in individual files that could be printed out at full scale and used as templates to check against our cutouts. I guess the Bomon drawings could be printed out but it seems like it is one drawing and I don't know how to separate them. The curves on those drawings also don't appear to be very smooth.

This is way too confusing...

 

[toddbrsd]

I have AutoCad

Mark,

I have AutoCad, so if you send me the .dwg file, I can print out the individual windows to 4 seperate .pdf files so you can print them out on your end.

I can also just save the whole drawing to one .pdf file and you can take it to Kinkos to get one larger plot.

You sent me your drawings last month or so, so you should still have my home email.

 

[Sven]

Mark,

I thought the diagram was a pict, gif or jpeg or something like that. It opened as an image in gmail without a viewer at all. I agree that it was surprisingly crude but assumed that was because it was produced on a windows machine since they don't anti-alias like we are used to.

I agree it is way too confusing but I'm just going to clean up the measurements and make them symmetric port <-> starboard.



-Sven

 

[mherrcat]

Hi Todd,

I thought I remembered you mentioning AutoCad. Sending the file now.

Thanks!


Sven,

Please post the dimensions that you end up using. I would like to compare them to the cutouts on my boat when I get to that point. Alain sent me the file embeded in an email as well. I asked him to send the actual CAD file, too, thinking it would be better, but apparently not...

Thanks!

 

[CSMcKillip]

Can someone forward the DWG file to me, I am an AutoCAD expert. Like to look at the drawings.....thanks.

Mckillip at valornet dot com