Winter in Seattle is a good time for tackling interior boat projects. I’ve always kept Apropos’ bronze exterior ports polished, but it’s been over 10 years since I polished the interior-side of the port openings. Apropos has a total of 14 openable ports–8 oval ports, 4 small 7″ round ports, 1 large 13″ round port and 1 rectangular port. Some had a nice patina color, but most showed signs of salt water that had come in contact with the bronze, resulting in green or white corrosion markings. So over the course of a few months, I removed each port along with the 2 thumbscrew/latches, and brought the pieces home to work on bringing them back to shiny using a dremel tool, some chemicals, scotch-brite pads, and a polishing compound. The outer frames could be removed but I decided it was easier to just polish them in place. Some of the pins holding the port to the frames were difficult to remove, but letting them soak overnight with an anti-corrosion spray did the trick.

Once the interior side of ports are polished, it’s easy to keep them that way with a quick hand-application of Flitz polishing compound once or twice a year.

Here are a few before and after shots.

Some other brass items I polished were a couple of reading lamps and a clock. The clock is mounted in the v-berth and had stopped working a few years ago due to a broken quartz movement, so I was going to toss it. The new ones I looked at were over $100 and had light-weight molded brass surrounds, not cast like what I had. I also liked the nautical face and the bevel around the outer edge of the glass, so I thought it was worth repairing. I ordered a new 4″ quartz movement for under $10 and adapted it to my clock, then polished it up and it looks (and runs) like new.