John: Hi Richard
And Richard is with a very big company that makes
thru-hull fittings. We're talking about PERKO.
And we're gonna be installing this particular one on
a different 23 foot Albury Brothers boat today
on the program. First off Richard what is the
base material of the thru-hull fitting.
And what is this beautiful plating
that's been put over top of it?
Richard: This is a bronze thru-hull fitting that has been
chrome plated.
John: Okay.
And take a look on how we have these
threads right here. Well that's for this flange nut
so that we can tighten it up to the hull side.
We also have a barb fitting right here,
our bilge hose slides over the end
of this barb fitting and then we clamp
that right there and it doesn't allow it
to back off.
Now traditionally, it takes two people
to install this type of a thru-hull fitting.
One on the outside of the boat,
one on the inside of the boat.
Because what happens is you have put a sealant
right here on this flange.
Well if it starts spinning you can compromise
the gasket and you can compromise the seal.
It has to be watertight.
So that's why you have one guy on the outside
and one guy on the inside.
But you have come up with a very cool
new type of thru-hull fitting
that only takes one person to install it.
Richard: That's correct.
John: Let's kinda share with everybody.
Richard: This is basically a shorten version of the one
we have on the table there.
And, the difference is that we've put a
notch in the back here that allows
the installer that once they've inserted it into the hole
and tighten down the flange snugly.
They can put a screwdriver here to hold
it place as they finish the tightening process.
John: That is awesome.
Now there are much less expensive
versions of thru-hull fittings.
The bronze is going to run you, the chrome plated bronze
maybe about $32 dollars a piece.
Richard: Correct.
John: We're putting them in a high-end boat so we don't mind
spending the money. But, if you are
price conscience you could also go with
a reinforced nylon version like this.
It's going to run you about $8 bucks.
But, in essence it's gonna do the same thing.
Richard: Correct.
John: Let's do this. Let's grab some tools
and let's real quick show everybody how to put
one of these into the hull side for the very first time.
Richard: Let's go!
(hammer clank effect)
John: What I have here is a 3/16 inch
drill bit and I want to use this as a guide hole.
I wanna start on the outside of the craft
and I'm gonna come in right here to this
hashmark. And I wanna drill this
going all the way through the boat.
Now this way I gonna have two
sides to kinda work from.
I'm eventually going to be using an
inch and 3/8 (1-3/8") hole saw.
I wanna cut it from the outside I wanna cut it from the inside.
Now what I want to do next is I want to grab
some low contact adhesive masking tape.
And I want to protect the outside finish
of the boat as well as the inside finish
of that fiberglass inner liner.
And now I going to switch out
drill bits. I'm actually gonna go to a hole saw.
A 1-3/8 inch hole saw.
And I'm first going to cut my hole
on the outside of the boat and I'm gonna work
in, towards the craft.
So I'll take it about 3 quarters of the way in.
But I don't wanna take it all the way through.
Because I don't want to bust out the fiberglass
on the inside of this fiberglass inner liner.
So instead I'm going to jump on the
inside of the boat and I'm now going to
attack it using the same guide hole.
And kinda make sure that everything lines up.
Now, what you're looking at here,
this is some exposed Core-Cell.
So we wanna mix up a little bit of polyester resin
and we wanna go ahead and really resin coat
the entire circumference
of that hole that we opened up.
But Richard let's talk about the thru-hull fitting
because we're at a spot were we need to
put in our bedding compound.
And, your guys are
kinda doing something special with
the flange to hold bedding
compounds. What's it all about?
Richard: That's correct John. This is called a
"bedding groove". And basically what it
does is it allows extra
bedding compound to be placed
inside the flange. So that you get
a tighter seal around the outside of the boat.
John: And is this unique to PERKO?
Richard: Yes it is.
John: Okay. Well what we're gonna do is we're
gonna put a good generous amount of the bedding compound
on the flange. And we're going
to slide it in from the outside of the boat
going in towards the craft.
Now, where we see the actual
perimeter of the thru-hull fitting on the
inside we need to caulk that up
with our polyurethane adhesive as well.
And now we can bring in the flange nut.
And we can kind of snug it into place.
But we don't wanna crank down on this!
Otherwise all of the polyurethane
adhesive is going to ooze out from the
thru-hull fitting and we're not gonna be sealing anything.
So instead, we wanna let it kinda
cure overnight. We'll come back in the morning,
we'll go ahead and crank it tight.
This way we have a nice gasket,
we're really going to get a good seal.
Well hey right now we need to take another timeout
but keep it right here because when we come back,
we're gonna be down in Miami, Florida.
We're gonna show you how this is manufactured,
thru-hull fittings. They're actually casted out of bronze
and if you're into fire. This next segment
is gonna blow you away.