Bob and Jane Salnick’s “Windborne in Puget Sound” blog has this useful tip:
Nothing outlasts Sunbrella.
Eventually, those vinyl windows in your hatch covers will die – turn yellow or brown and go opaque, long before the Sunbrella is finished. Hatch cover vinyl seem to be far worse at this than the vinyl in dodgers – perhaps because the sun strikes it more directly. Ours had gotten pretty bad. Here’s a piece of old vinyl next to a piece of new:
So Jane went to Seattle Fabrics and got some new vinyl. Now the $64 question is how to actually do the job, without losing the shape of the fabric? Once the old vinyl is removed, there will be nothing to hold things in place. The standard technique is to sew the new vinyl in behind the old vinyl, and then cut the old vinyl back to the inside edge of the opening. We did not like this because:
- Jane’s machine would never sew thru two thicknesses of vinyl
- Now the edge will twice as thick as it was before. Imagine doing this a third time, or even a forth.
So we needed a different process.
