My friend needs to remove her grab rails on her Erricson. I took a look at them last weekend and saw that I have access to screws on each end from the inside of the cabin, but all the others have to be removed from the top. On top of the rails I see that there are either dowels or bungs to flush it up. Does anyone have any good ideas on how to get down to the screw heads without messing them up?
The easy way to remove bungs is to use a course thread drywall screw directly into the top of the bung. It will screw itself in, until it hits the top of the buried screw, then it'll pop out the bung, literally climbing up the drywall screw threads as you go. If it doesn't it'll do two things, it'll break the bung, which makes removal easy or the threads will strip, which doesn't hurt anything.
Any other method, like trying to dig it out with something will usually ruin the bung hole, which is something you want to preserve normally.
Thanks Paul. That sounds fantastic! I'm sure that'll get it. We'll be going out on the boat tomorrow and we'll try to get the rails off too. She has some areas under the rails where there's a combination of rust and wearing out of the glass around the base where the rail makes contact with the deck. When she bought the boat last spring, we could see and smell that she had some leak issues to deal with. This appears to be a primary source of the problem, though there may be more.