The gaskets on this fishbox hatch are long gone as you can see. Not only does water now get into my
fishbox, but this is even worse. Ready for this? [LOUD SLAM] Wow! A slam like that will scare
every fish for a mile. I need to replace these gaskets. Hi, I'm Lenny Rudow for BoatUS Magazine,
and today we're going to talk about how to replace deteriorated gaskets. A link to the
materials we've used is in the description below. You really want to think of this like a paint job.
The trick to getting it right is really all in the preparation. Of course stage one is
going to be removing the old gasket. You may need to use a scraper, but, you know,
whatever it takes get rid of every little bit of that old gasket. Now in this particular case,
this is box number two. I've already done box number one, and i found out that the gasket
actually works better on this piece of fiberglass, so I'm not going to worry about that right now.
But if in the real world, you have a gasket there, get rid of it, then clean, clean, clean. Now,
I've already scrubbed out this box but, again, I'm going to wipe all these surfaces down and
make sure that they are good and clean. Afterward I'm going to get a fresh rag and some acetone. Now
I'm going to wipe down all these surfaces with the acetone.
Now it's time to get your gasket material ready. This is a kind called "Steel Rubber," and what
I like about this is it comes with a 3M sticky stuff right on the back. This is a peel and stick.
As you can see, this is a straight rectangular shape, but you will encounter some gaskets that
are curved or arched, and in that case, you want to make sure that the curve is going in the right
direction. It's not uncommon to accidentally put a gasket on backward and then it doesn't fit right.
Of course, before you get ready to lay it down, you also want to measure everything out and make
absolutely sure that it fits properly. Now this is really, really important: Don't peel that
backing off right away. If you do, you'll end up with sticky stuff everywhere and you'll ruin
the gasket. Just take off a tiny little bit, a couple inches, then place it where you want it.
I'm going to start right here. Firmly press down and slowly peel the backing as you go.
When you get to the very end, cutting it is as simple as grabbing your scissors. There we go.
You may have noticed I got lucky with that box. There are no 90 degree angles. It can be really
hard to bend this stuff into a 90 degree, so here's what you do. Take a regular business card, lay it
right there on the gasket itself, and use it to draw a V onto the gasket.
Then take your scissors and use those lines of the V to make a little notch and kind of miter it.
Then when you bend the V together, it makes a perfect 90 degree angle. As we talked about
before, this old gasket has to come off. We don't need to do that, you don't need to watch that,
and I don't want to slam this hatch right now because i want to give that gasket 24 hours for
that adhesive to set. But remember, I also said I did this box. I did this one about a week ago,
and this one's all set now. [SOFT THUD] Listen to the difference!
Not nearly as spooky for the fish. I love the way this gasket has come out. Well,
folks, I hope you found this video helpful, and hey, don't forget to click on the button
below to subscribe, and that way you won't miss our future BoatUS Magazine videos!