Polishing Brass Portholes

Discussions about Cape Dory, Intrepid and Robinhood sailboats and how we use them. Got questions? Have answers? Provide them here.

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Frank Vernet

Polishing Brass Portholes

Post by Frank Vernet »

The 1982 CD 33' I have has lovely original brass portholes. Does anyone have experience with polishing them and/or keeping them polished? Is this even recommended?

Frank



vernetf@afwtf.navy.mil
Ryan Turner

Re: Polishing Brass Portholes

Post by Ryan Turner »

Unless you want to spend all your time working on the boat vs. sailing her you should simply learn to love that beautiful green patina. Several people have tried to keep them polished and simply given up on the effort. After all, there will be plenty of other things to work on if your boat is anything like every other boat I've seen.

Ryan Turner
s/v Zenobia
CD33 hull no. 100
Oriental, NC



rturnertec@aol.com
Tom

Re: Polishing Brass Portholes

Post by Tom »

Frank Vernet wrote: The 1982 CD 33' I have has lovely original brass portholes. Does anyone have experience with polishing them and/or keeping them polished? Is this even recommended?

Frank
If you do want to polish them, however, there is a recent thread about this in the archives. In the search window at the top just type in "portholes". As with most CD owners and boat owners in general I don't polish mine.



TomCambria@mindspring.com
Catherine Monaghan

Re: Polishing Brass Portholes

Post by Catherine Monaghan »

Frank,

Cape Dory used two different types of bronze (not brass) ports -- polished bronze or burnished bronze, depending on the choice of the original owner.

If your ports are the polished bronze type, they can be polished but they'll only oxidize again. If they are burnished bronze, they are not meant to be polished but I suppose you could if you really wanted to.

Once the surface has oxidized it won't oxidize much further. It actually provides a protective finish. If you decide to polish the bronze, you'll be removing that protective finish which will eventually re-oxidize. So you're probably better off just leaving them be.

You'll have to choose.

catherine_monaghan@merck.com
CD32 <a href="http://www.hometown.aol.com/bcomet/real ... ization</a>, #3
Rahway, NJ
Raritan Bay
Frank Vernet wrote: The 1982 CD 33' I have has lovely original brass portholes. Does anyone have experience with polishing them and/or keeping them polished? Is this even recommended?

Frank


catherine_monaghan@merck.com
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