DECK AND RIG GEAR
Blocks, cleats, chainpipes, Dorade vents and more... it can be a bit of a maze, and it’s important to get these expensive things right rst time
Nowadays it is possible to source a great variety of deck and rig fittings for classic boats. While many of those are available as off-the-shelf items, almost anything can be custom-made if you know where to look. With regard to materials, the more traditional classic boat owners will probably favour bronze, brass or galvanised (or a finish visually resembling one of those), while others will be happy with stainless-steel or chrome plating.
WINCHES
Various makes of bronze and chrome plated winches – self-tailing and non-self-tailing - are readily available from several manufacturers, including British company Lewmar, Harken and Antal (both Italian), Hutton-Arco (Australian), Murray (made by White Star Products in New Zealand), Wilmex (Polish) and Classic Winch Company (based in the Netherlands).
The purist may not like the fact that the bronze winches produced by some of these companies are not visibly not completely bronze, typically having the central drive shaft – the top of which, where the handle is inserted, is visible – in chrome or stainless-steel; while Harken winches have an incongruous red line between the drum and base (although this, apparently, is a cosmetic finishing piece that is easily removed). Lewmar winches are completely bronze in appearance with the exception of the barely-noticeable dark coloured plastic rope-friendly self-tailing jaws and stripper rings.
The drums for Lewmar’s larger winches are actually made from stainless steel, for additional strength, and then coated with a Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD) to resemble bronze. PVD is a process by which a solid material is vaporized in a vacuum and then deposited onto a surface. It is normally available in a variety of colours and is generally reckoned to be more durable and hard wearing than chrome plating.
Danish company Andersen’s winches are all made from stainless-steel with a polished finish as standard. But they can also be PVD coated either in black or a bronze effect colour (or, by special order, any other
PVD colour); or, by bead blasting the stainless steel, the ZT Finish replicates the look of galvanising or titanium. Instead of a more conventional “peened” surface on the surface of the drum where the rope is wound, Andersen winches have distinctive vertical Power Ribs which, the company claims, provide a superior grip on the rope without causing excessive wear.
Andersen’s Classic range includes winches with bottom-action handles, in some cases locating in the winch base, in others at the bottom of an under-deck drive shaft. Harken recently produced a set of winches with under-deck handles for a Second Rule 6-Metre. Although these were done to special order, they are now part of the company’s standard range. Murray winches also have bottom-action handles, and some of them are available with a cleat on the top of the winch. This is not intended to be a self-tailing device in the conventional sense, but allows singlehanded tightening of a rope without the need to uncleat. As it happens, White Star Products are now reducing their production of Murray winches due to slow sales and increasing costs, and are now only manufacturing the smaller models.
Lewmar, Harken, Antal and Hutton-Arco can all supply electric or hydraulic power units, generally for their larger winches, and with some companies able to provide electric motors in horizontal or vertical configuration to allow for different space availability below deck. But Hutton-Arco not only provide power units for all their own winches, they can also do so for various other makes, including winches such as Barient and Barlow winches which are no longer manufactured.
OTHER DECK AND RIG FITTINGS
Off-the-shelf fittings are available in bronze, brass, stainless steel and/or chrome from numerous companies such as Davey & Co, Classic Marine, Proboat, Brookes & Adams, Sea Sure, Perko, Antal, Lewmar and German company Toplicht. Lewmar and Antal are able to PVD-coat their stainless-steel fittings, and about half a dozen of Sea Sure’s pressed stainlesssteel products are PVD-coated in a bronze colour exclusively for Classic Marine.
But if you can’t find exactly what you want from any of those companies, it is highly likely that you will be able to find someone to make whatever it is you want, although that is likely to have cost and time implications. You are probably never very far away from a stainless-steel fabrication company but let us take a look at those companies who can cast and fabricate bronze fittings.
To cast any fitting, a pattern is needed. Patterns are traditionally made out of timber and they are used to form a sand mould, into which molten bronze is poured. So a certain mount of investment will be required and this will give many people the impression that a one-off casting, or a small batch of castings, will be prohibitively expensive. However, that need not be the case. To start with, it may well be that a suitable pattern already exists. For instance, Colin Frake, who produces a great variety of bronze fittings in Faversham, has “dozens and dozens and dozens” of patterns that he has accumulated over the past forty years or so. “I have never really listed what we can do, and that is probably my loss,” he said, “I just say to people let me know what you want and if I can help I will.”
Most companies are happy to modify an old pattern to suit a new request and this is normally a relatively straightforward thing to do with timber. Sometimes it is easiest to use an actual existing cast fitting as a pattern, and Davey & Co, Colin Frake and East Coast Metalworks are all used to doing that. However, as