FreedomYachts.org

Has anyone undertaken removing the mirror? I've been advised it is probably held in place with adhesive and a trim piece at the top. If you replaced it, were you able to get it out in one piece? Any lessons to share?

thanks

If it's anything like the mirror in the forward head of my Freedom 45, you don't have much to worry about. I had to drop mine to put in the propane fireplace. It was held in place by the trim pieces along the top, bottom, and the outboard side. It looked like at one point they had gooped it up on the back and stuck it in place, but the goop had long since dried out and no longer held up anything. I regooped with some silicone, but I also added a couple more screws along the bottom to make sure it was supporting the weight properly. The mirror itself was pretty substantial - much more so than the clown mirror on the back of the head door on my Freedom 40.

My F36 (1986) had the mirror attached with plastic clips like you can by at Lowes or Home Depot. Replaced it two years ago and the new one looks like the old one did with the silver backing peeling. Is there a cure for this, such as epox applied around the edges to stop the peel?

Bill Cormack
Sailing F36 Hard Earned
Padanaram, MA

I'm thinking about using a mirrored acrylic that i've seen in Airbus 320 series airliners. I talked with a sales person at us plastics in ohio last year about this material, and it seemed interesting. Lighter than glass, they claimed the silvering wasn't affected by moisture. In the airplanes, you can see that it's "wavier" than a real mirror, but not by much.

Hank
F45cc/20

Huh? Who wants to look at their face while sailing??

Our F33 has some sort of plastic (acrylic?) mirror in the head--it could be old enough to be original (1981), although I don't think TPI would have used these plastic clips that you find at Lowes to attach it, so it most likely dates back to one of the prior owners.

Since half of those plastic clips have cracked off, and the silver is corroding and turning blue, we do need to replace it pretty soon--but it is way down on our list of things we gotta do, and may not happen until after we get underway.

Back to your original question on removing the mirror

If it's been glued on somehow, get a piece of wire like a guitar string and attach a handle to each end and "saw" the glue joint.

They actually SELL a piece of wire with a swaged in loop on each end and plastic tubing covering the wire in the resulting loops for the purpose of cutting PVC pipe (like when you've dug a hole in the ground and need to replace a section of the pipe without digging all the way to the next joint in each direction.)

I have one in my tool kit...they are really handy, take up no room, and are available in the plumbing section at the big-box home repair centers...around $5 to $7 by my recollection.

I had a similar corroded plastic mirror with simple (not to say cheap) plastic clips in the forward head. I think it's original. I took it off when I installed the Dickinson Alaska diesel heater on the reverse side of the bulkhead. We took the forward head out of commission and use it as a shed for prams, sun awnings, fishing gear, shopping crates, light air sails and more stuff. The toilet bowl is still in place but I think I'll remove that to create more storage space.

I'm in the mirrored plexiglass camp. Putting a big pane of glass in a small compartment of a boat where we will most likely spend a good bit of time naked = bad idea. Add to this the 7 years of bad luck thingy...

When I resurrected my Nimble 30 there was a crack in the Formica wall of the head that I covered with a plexi mirror. When I caught up with the boat again years later it was still in good shape.

George