(no subject)

[scrottie]

Still need to retention the standing rigging and still need to decide if I'm going to pull any other chainplates (not sure if fore and aft terminals are "chainplates" or something else) but backstay is re-attached and has some tension on it again, and all of the rig has light tension, so things are less precarious. The tweaker, while he was here, very randomly, gave me a used chainplate, and that's now backing under the deck for part of the backstay "chainplate", which has a complicated design pulls against the deck, and pulls upward and outward from the transom. Whatever they came up with seems to have worked. Like other chainplates, it's levering force. Shrouds go to wedges angled about 20 degrees that are bolted through bulkheads that transfer a component of the force in to pushing the bulkhead back instead of pulling up. The owner's discussion list suggested pretty affordable dye kits of testing stainless, but I didn't do that. Reading about stainless corrosion, I found two interesting bits that I can't verify. One tells you to dangle it from a string and smack it with a hammer and listen if it rings true through the whole length of the thing. Another says that crevice corrosion usually is a product of tiny stress fractures which happens when abuse the property of 316 and similar stainless of resisting elongation until at or near breaking stress, so stress fractures and corrosion are far more common in underbuilt stainless. Anyway, some important work was done on re-bedding that when re-installing it. Decks are marine ply with only a very thin layer of fiberglass, maybe one layer, over them. It's critical that water not get to the wood under the fiberglass for any extended period, and it looks like this piece had never been pulled out. The bedding compound was completely shot and under it, the original but crazed gelcoat and fiberglass. That got another coat of epoxy to fill the cracks and new bedding compound plus new nuts, bolts, and washers. Oh yeah, and in taking bolts out, I figured out that the transom is wood cored too, also with thin fiberglass. So it's wood and wood holding up the mast from the rear. Chainplates could come out fairly easily at this point but the forestay "chainplate" has some added complication of the jib roller furler encasing it and needing to be handled some currently unknown level of care. That would be nice to have re-done in bronze so I could leave it and have a probably-correctly measured version done in bronze then mess with it later, or I could pull it and inspect it and very likely convince myself that it's fine as-is. Maybe I should actually do the dye kit there. And it's not like there isn't a bunch of other things that need attention. The 50 year old paper thin fiberglass on the decks is cracking all over and needs to be re-done. I've been bodging it with bedding sealant. Due for new side and bottom paint and an anode. Oiled the exterior teak. Managed to find a Rio Vista dentist who is answering the phone, accepting new patients, and able to see me pretty quick here. They don't take AMEX but they do take cash according to the site so I'm going to test that. Failed to bring laser printed check blanks with me. If I'd done that right, I'd just pop in to places rather than trying to call. It's a small enough town that people are beyond casual with phones but, if you catch them in, more than glad to get visitors. Relatedly, Lira's Welding has plans for chain plates and I need to catch the owner in to move that forward, I'm pretty sure. Having fun with this tiny thermal travel printer, printing new patient forms and mechanical drawings and IRS forms and DMV forms and... oh yeah, I need to send my father photos. Back and white thermal photos coming up. This is the man who once sent me his phone by Priority Mail so I could admire his cat photos. He understands MMS now but now his eye sight is a limiting factor and he has a flip phone with a tiny screen. A proper old person phone should show Star Wars style holograms. Sidenote to me drooling over bronze here, the cleats and chocks are all bronze and worn enough to make me think they might be original. Kicking myself here but there was a huge manual bilge pump mounted inside the starboard locker that was bronze that I pulled out and just put in recycling (without knowing if it was property routed... that was the hectic summer). That probably should have been passed on to collectors or something. In 1965, stainless must have been a new wonder material or something, because the mix of stainless and bronze is kind of odd, but bronze is not out of place. The rubrail and coaming screws are all bronze too. There's a perverse pleasure in trying to make things last forever that were designed to last forever.