Davits: Buy or build?

[laika]

I have a couple of substantial fittings on the back of my boat which clearly once had davits in them. They seem to be 41mm internal diameter, 100mm deep. I note that most off-the-shelf davits use 40mm tubing which would seem about right, so buying is probably an option. I have negligible metal fabrication skills myself, but I do know someone local with an excellent reputation for working in steel.

Buy or build? Or rather, buy or have custom made? And what do I need to think about in either case?

 

[alanch]

I had a steel boat with a couple of home made davits on the stern. Made from steel section and bolted down, they each had a hand winch similar to a small trailer winch. I was concerned at their SWL so gave them the "if they each take my 105kgs then they will take an inflatable and 5hp outboard test". Not the most pleasing looking davits, but functional with the only downside that each winch had to be operated separately, unless there were 2 of you. If you do get your own made then provided you are only lifting something fairly light as I was then a simple load test as above would probably suffice. If you want to lift a larger inboard rib or similar, the elf & safety brigade would dictate a proper load test.

 

[laika]

should have mentioned: The boat is a tad over 12m and the tender is a rather modest bombard ax3 with a mariner 2.5. Should I ever replace either it wouldn't be with anything much bigger.

Edit: Looking at the french bombard site for the ax3's weight (23Kg) it's only after all these years that I realise that the "ax" must stand for "annexe" which apparently is a term for "tender". Today has not been wasted.

 

[pvb]

Edit: Looking at the french bombard site for the ax3's weight (23Kg) it's only after all these years that I realise that the "ax" must stand for "annexe" which apparently is a term for "tender". Today has not been wasted.

I think that "annexe" is rather the equivalent of "tender to...". French boats with tenders above a certain size have to have the tender marked with AXE plus the boat's name.