One of the major projects that Lucas and Emily have undertaken in the restoration of their sailboat, the Alaya, is replacing all of the windows. The challenge was coming up with an efficient way to accurately duplicate the original, hand-fit windows in 1/2″ polycarbonate. With hands on experience and a lot of brainstorming, our process evolved:

• Trace the original windows, make plywood templates, attach templates to new material with the “painter’s tape and CA glue” trick, cut the new window with several incremental passes with a flush trim router bit
• Use the original windows directly as templates, attach them to the new material with the “painter’s tape and CA glue” trick, cut the new window using a sharp wood cutting blade in a jigsaw, clean up the edges with one pass with a flush trim router bit
• Use the original windows directly as templates, attach them to the new material with the double sided CNC tape, cut the new window using a sharp wood cutting blade in a jigsaw, clean up the edges with one pass with a flush trim router bit

We did have to return to plywood templates for a few of the windows when Lucas and Emily determined that replacements for some of the original windows could be made to better fit their fiberglass openings.