Thursday, February 08, 2007

Update

Many things going on with Nevermind these days...for one, she got all the new ground tackle. The new setup is:

Primary - a 35# CQR on 150' of 1/4" high test chain and 150' of 1/2" 3 strand nylon

Stern - 22# Danforth on 60' of 1/4" high test chain and 250' of 1/2" 3 strand nylon

The current Windline bow roller is perfect for the CQR, but I also got a Windline chain stopper for the bower and a Windline rail bracket for the stern Danforth. One of the nice ABI bronze deckpipes will finish off the stern.
I haven't got the new anchor painted yet, and the ropes aren't spliced to the chain yet, and I don't have good shackles yet...but all this is soon to come!

The chainplate replacement is proceeding apace. Here's a view of the aft port lower knee with the new chainplate temporarily clamped to it for some test fitting. The new chainplates are 1" x 1/4" 316L stainless, fabricated by yours truly with the precision tools of an angle grinder and a drill press. It took considerable care to do a neat job but they came out great.
To give the new chainplates a perfect clamping surface I coated each one heavily with paste wax and then created a bed of silica-thickened epoxy on the knee. I temporarily bolted in the plates during the epoxy cure. I can't wait to paint back over the knees - they look so awful right now.
The final step is the deck filling and fairing. Water intrusion had caused some deck core deterioration around the chainplate holes, so I drilled and filled the core void with thickened epoxy. Again making sure the plates were heavily waxed, I also filled around the plates to make a fairly tight-fitting chainplate slot. Next: finer fairing and paint. Posted by Picasa

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