Aluminum Framed Access Doors vs. Starboard Access Doors

Aluminum Framed Boat Access Doors

Andrew 00:08
So what is the thickness of the frame as far as the aluminum framed doors that we build, how far off the fiberglass?

Matt 00:17
It’s about a 16. It's a 16. Yeah. For the medium extrusion frame, it's about a 16th.

Andrew 00:23
Gotcha. And that is obviously quite a bit less than half inch, right? Which is typically what the storyboard frame is. That is when people call and ask questions about these doors is that a lot of times the biggest driving factor is the distance off, or is it more the acrylic and the gloss.

Jared 00:44
Or even the mounting style.

Matt 00:45
It’s always a combination of them. But a lot of it is aesthetics. And a lot of people don't want things standing proud off the mounting surface, just because it doesn't look as clean doesn't look as flush. So this is definitely the best thing that we offer for a higher end finish. And the nice thing is you get it done very easily on the website with an acrylic door. And so you get a high polish powder coated frame, high polish, glossy acrylic door, it looks really nice up against your Glossy wax, gel coat. And it's a very clean installation.

Andrew 01:23
More difficult installation.

Matt 01:24
So definitely a more difficult installation, you know, these frames, which I'm not sure if you can see on the camera here, but they have inside mounting holes inside the frame. So you have to have at least a half inch of bulkhead thickness in order to install them. So the challenge.

Andrew 01:39
So the screws are here.

Matt 01:40
Correct, right

Andrew 01:41
Versus starboard, you're coming through here. So you set it in place and you're screwed right into fiberglass on starboard, where's this, you might not even have the thickness of…

Jared 01:51
Fiberglass built up, they'll do some type of buildup strip or something to screw in,

Matt 01:55
Right and we've had customers use Star board or PVC or something around the inside of their opening to build that up and mount this way. The reason why it has to be mounted through here is this frame overlay is only half an inch. So if you move a screw halfway in, you're a quarter of an inch from the edge, you can't really countersink that because the screw head might get into the edge of the frame. And then you're too close to your cut out. If you cut out isn't perfect, yeah, your screw may blow the hole out exactly.

So can you can you work around that in a pinch? Yes, you can probably use a machine screw and a washer to sandwich the fiberglass. It's not something that anyone's really going to see once it's installed. Unless this is going into a console with a head that someone's going to see from the inside. But nine times out of 10. That's not the case. So the reason these are only offered with inside mounting holes is because that overlay is so much smaller than on the Starboard frames, which is seven eighths overlay.

Andrew 02:51
The customers asked for trim rings on these often.

Matt 02:55
We've had it happen, I wouldn't say it's often.

Andrew 02:58
Yeah, seems like that would be beneficial to be able to slide the trim ring on the inside, fasten through the face. So what you have to have to do is set the trim ring inside your cut out screw through and countersink to mount that that trim ring from the front. Right?

Matt 03:16
Kind of there's a couple of different ways to do it. That's one of the option.

Andrew 03:19
How else would you do it?

Matt 03:20
You can use PVC and adhere it to the inside wall.

Jared 03:23
So I think with a lot of those, you can just land those on like a lot of the console doors rather than an access door like this, right? Because you're inside of a head and you're looking out and you can actually see where it's trimmed out around without that PVC ring inside the console. I think with a lot of the access doors people aren't requesting those simply for the fact that it might be access to a build urinary that interior. You're not looking out at that.

Andrew 03:47
Yeah, I'm talking about what you screw into versus not what you want what you trim the back out there. So yeah, the result, though, is that once it's set in a place, you have no fasteners, right, right.

Matt 04:02
And so very nicely. Yeah nice Installation.

Jared 04:07
Yeah, so the advantage of this would be from an aesthetic standpoint, it's going to sit less proud than a poly poly door. You know, it's going to match the sheen of the gel coat. It's going to be a little bit more expensive than a poly poly door for sure. You know what that poly poly door we've done some things where, you know, again, this is sitting a 16th of an inch proud.

The poly poly door generally sits half of an inch proud and that would be what you'd order off of the website for a build your own. But there's special cases where we've actually milled that Poly down so it sits a little bit less proud. With that's probably not a cost savings because there's a lot more mealtime that's required from the router at that point, right?

Matt 04:46
Yes. Yeah, there's definitely more mill time Do you have a frame from the back and the

Jared 04:52
The reason people want to go to that is the advantage of a poly poly doors that are just more durable.

Matt 04:57
It is definitely more durable. It's more utilitarian for sure. It's don't get me wrong, it's a very nice door. But from an aesthetic standpoint, this, this is going to outweigh it. The other challenge that you're going to face though, is a poly poly door is going to fit into a square corner cut out where this one is not. Right? This is going to fit into a radius corner cut out, I think this one's like an inch and an eighth.

Andrew 05:21
So specifically, if you if you measured an existing square corner cut out and you ordered this door, you would set it into place, right? And you would see points at the corner right here. Correct. So if you had an existing cutout, what you would have to do is you'd have to increase the size of that cutout and add radiuses to the corners for this to be able to set in, right. Yeah, so that you know that exacerbates and it's not an undoable thing. Well, we have tons of customers that do if and I don't want scare people away, but our goal is I want to be able to buy this door set it and things screw it on didn't then the star board is definitely your option. If you're more like no, this is my baby and I'm going to make it really, really, really high and nice.

Matt 06:02
It's just another layer of challenge to the install. It's definitely not prohibitive, it's just one more step in the process.

Jared 06:09
Yeah, with the powder coating you're seeing a lot of the builders now do the powder coating to all of their, you know, T tops, etc. You know still yet to be seen how well that holds up over the years. You know, there's people specifically in some of those boat forums that are like I want the anodized aluminum I don't want the powder coating, they're kind of ordering a special order boat to get that anodized aluminum.

I think that's something that as we talk about these doors that you know, people to consider that the powder coat can crack over time. We do a really good job vetting the powder coating that we use and they hold up well in the field but I think it's something interesting to make sure people know as well is that you know, if you've got a door that still looks really good, but the frames, not we have the frames available for people as well.

Andrew 06:52
Yeah, we do sell replacement frames. Absolutely. Even those frames they should get you, you know, seven plus years or hopefully 10 years but yeah, like you say, yeah, so waters drilled tough on powder coat in general.