Salt Etching
Salt Etching
Does anybody have any ideas on how to remove salt marks from glass windows? I purchased a 33 Bertram one year ago and there were permanent salt stains etched into the windows. I have tried 3M rubbing compound and it works, but it is very labor intensive. Also, once clean, any suggestions on preventing future damage in case the windows aren't washed immediately? Rain-X has been suggested and I'm curious if anybody has used it. Thanks, Kevin
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will newton
- Lieutenant
- Posts: 31
- Joined: Mon Sep 08, 2003 2:53 am
Kevin, I used rain X on my windows and found it helped quite a bit. Also, the eching may be comming from hard water. You need to get a water softner for you scrub downs. If your marina has hard water (most do) the softner will do a lot to make your cleaning job easier. The eching problem will not be as bad and you have very few water spots after a cleaning. If you notice, all the bigger crewed yachts will have some type of "spot free" device (mainly a softner) on their washing systems...helps make the boat sparkle. I went to a local water treatement company and they fixed up a fiberglass in-out softer for me for $250. All I do is run a little salt water through it every now and then and I keep it on the dock with my hose. Might want to consider it.
I determined the problem to likely be acid rain damage & I finally fixed the problem. After using many different types of abrasives that didn't take care of the damage without scratching the glass, I finally achieved a balance. I used a metal polishing wheel in an electric drill with coarse polish, working towards fine polish. It took out the etching and by the time I got finished with the finest polish, the windows looked great. If you look very closely, you can see very fine swirl marks. But it now looks 95% better and I didn't have to change my windows. As a last step, I applyied Rainex and everything just beads off the windows now. One last word of advice; don't attempt this job unless you have a lot of patience & time. I worked for about an hour per day for at least 20 days. But it was one of the last steps unaccomplished in restoring my Bertram and worth the effort.
