[Public-List] A confession...
David Swanson
zira at bellsouth.net
Sat Mar 2 14:52:15 PST 2024
I recall pulling the strainer off #229 when we first got her. The holes were 75% plus plugged. Like you said, short self-tapping screws, stainless steel in our case. Given that loosing that strainer would not be catastrophic (we had a "real" strainer mounted inside), I replaced the screws with longer bronze ones & left it at that.
On Saturday, March 2, 2024 at 11:23:13 AM EST, Gordon Laco via Public-List <public-list at lists.alberg30.org> wrote:
Hello,
Well, big day today. I did something on the boat I’ve been wanting/meaning/needing to do for over twenty-five years.
Whitby Boatworks had among other bad habits, the habit of jury rigging their own through hull fittings. They’d take a piece of brass pipe, thread one end and push that through a hole made in the hull. outside, they’d put a large brass washer over the pipe, then with the nut on the threads inside, pound a mandrel into the open end of the brass pipe outside the boat, making a slight flare on the pipe against which the pipe pulls when the inside nut is tightened.
That’s not really a through hull fitting, partly due to the issue of the soft brass pipe eventually wanting to squeeze the flare out of itself, and partly due to the issue of the pipe wanting to turn against the washer when one is trying to snug the inside nut up hard tight to prevent leaks. And of course there is the danger of catastrophic failure if the thin walled pipe gives up resistance and gets pulled in through the outside washer. Boats sink when that happens. The hole would hard to get at to plug, and being so far down a lot of flooding can happen before one knows… putting the hole under the rising bilge water surface and impossible to find… oh what a nightmare.
So, all Alberg 30 owners are ‘encouraged’ to replace those jury-rigged through hull fittings. When I bought the boat in ’99 I replaced all of them but for the one serving the engine’s cooling water intake. I thought I couldn’t get the bronze strainer which covers the outside of the fitting off the boat. People had told me they’re bolted on and I couldn’t find the inside nuts of the bolts… and the outside of the thing was completely coated in 50 years of bottom paint. Intimidated, I put the job off year after year.
Today I went to the boat determined to chip away the paint and find the heads of the bolts, then murder them all by drilling their heads off and prying the strainer off the headless corpses of the bolts. I was then going to grind off the stumps of the bolts, and when I came to put the strainer back on after fitting a proper through hull fitting, rotate it a few degrees so as to miss the carcasses of the old bolts. I planned to drill new fastener holes, tap threads in them and drive in new #8 size machine screws.
I scraped off the old paint and found the slot heads of the fasteners…imagine my surprise when touched the first one with my drill bit, and it basically spun and fell out. The other three also came out too easily with only a few turns of my screw driver. They aren’t bolts… they’re very short self tapping screws in holes that were too large for them. Imagine that.
So the strainer came off. There, finally visible in clear daylight was the evil thin brass pipe through-hull fitting with the washer… the last one in the boat to be replaced. I’m going to do that next.
Onwards.
G
Gordon Laco
www.gordonlaco.com <http://www.gordonlaco.com/>
705-527-9612
Gordon Laco
www.gordonlaco.com
705-527-9612
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