1980 C27. I'm just starting to remove the glassed-in brass nipples that Catalina used for through hulls and replace them with bronze mushroom through hulls. Those brass nipples are in there pretty solid and I didn't have much luck with my first approach. My second approach is to take a sawzall with a longer bi-metal metal cutting blade(so you can flex it a little and lay it flat along the hull laminate) and cut through some of the glass build up around the nipple and through the nipple itself. Then from the outside of the boat use the sawzall with one of the narrow and short metal cutting blade and cut through the wall of the brass nipple in three places and then try to pry out the three sections of the nipple. How has anyone else removed them? What method did you use? Thanks for the help.
Removing Catalina 27 Original Through Hulls
- Thread starter Ajay73
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Removed from a '77 c27. When I tried to unscrew the gate valve, after limited resistance, the nipple broke loose and just turned in the hull. Essentially used the method you describe of flexing a sawsall blade to cut the inside near the top of the the built up hump, then cut through the nipple in three places from outside, and drove the pieces out from the inside. I installed a flush through hull to keep that nice smooth bottom that those high dollar close nipples provided. Similar Pics from install of flush thru hull on my 310
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Valcor, thanks for the reply. My gate valve came off with no problem but when I tried to turn the nipple in the hull there was absolutely no way it was going to turn.
Yesterday I took out two of the through hulls, the one under the galley and one under the V berth on the starboard side near the bulkhead. The gate valves unscrewed fairly easily but getting the glassed in nipples was a little tough mainly because of the awkward location they were in. On one I used a sawzall and on the other I used a grinder to cut through the nipple. From the outside I used the sawzall as I mentioned above and that worked great. One thing about the boat I was impressed with is that the hull laminate in both locations was about 3/8 inch. I thought that was pretty thick considering the locations which were both fairly far from the centerline of the boat. The other thing is that the glassed in nipples were really in solid. I thought they would twist out pretty easy but that wasn't the case. I will now have to grind down the hump of glass to get enough of a flat spot to epoxy in a backing plate. I'm also going to replace the raw water intake valve and strainer but that should be easier because of its location. It also looks like there is not the buildup of glass on that one probably because the hull laminate will be pretty thick I expect.
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