Galvanised standing rigging?

[CharlesM]

Hello all

Following on 'Standing Rigging - how old'...

I once saw a boat which had galvanised steel standing rigging. Not nice and shiny like stainless but black due to the tar(?) used to treat it.

The owner said that galvanised rigging has a lifetime which certainly exceeds that of stainless, is much much cheaper to install and visual inspection will show any defects or deteriation wheras stainless can go without warning.

Downside is each year you need to treat it (how? - can it be done in situ or do you need to take it down and soak it?) and does not look as good as stainless.

Question:
What type of costs would be involved in replacing stainless with galvanised steel?
What other items need replacing besides the 'wires' themselves?
Could one use the old bottle screws?
Once treated, will the rigging be sticky and messy?
Will insurers still insist on 10 yearly replacement?


Any comments or opinions would be appreciated.

Thanks
Charles

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[snowleopard]

i have used galvanised stays on boats ancient and modern. the normal construction is 7x7 as opposed to 1x19 stainless. hand splicing is not as difficult as it seems, especially if you use the liverpool splice, not the naval version. galvanised is more ductile than stainless and very much less prone to fatigue failure. galv is however unsuitable for roller forestays.

i doubt an insurer would give it a longer life than stainless as above all it requires carefull monitoring for rust.

to prevent corrosion the lay of the wire needs to be treated with something to prevent trapped moisture eating away at it. traditionally it was dressed with boiled linseed oil. i pack the splices with grease, parcel with insulating tape then serve. the insulating tape prevents electrical connection with stainless or bronze bottlescrews otherwise the galvanising will vanish rapidly. i remove the parcelling every few years, examine and re-grease.

by using a cheaper wire and replacing swages with thimbles you save a great deal of money. i'd be using it to this day but now consider stays unnecessary ;-)

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[qsiv]

Hand splicing may not be difficult - but I've seldom seen as much blood (mine) as when my old man was teaching me to splice (and that would have only been 3/16 for a dinghy). I'm not sure I could remember now, but I was chuffed as anything to have spliced my own rigging when I was 10!

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[Mirelle]

My lower shrouds date from 1976 and the other stays from 1985.

Not a trace of rust on any of them, but the lower shrouds are wormed, parcelled and served and the other stays get a couple of coats of boiled linseed oil every Spring.

My surveyor had kittens. But I am quite prepared to take the risk of the mast falling down due to rigging failure because it simply won't happen. This is quite big wire - 10, 12 and 14mm, 7x7, Boulevant spliced.

<hr width=100% size=1>Que scais-je?

 

[CharlesM]

Hey Snowleopard

You using a gaff rig then (that you do not need stays)?

Anyway, when you talk about splicing the rigging, are you talking about splicing the ends or are you talking about using 7 strands to create one strand? (sounds like a load of work!)

you use a few words that seem to me to be more in place in the kitchen (galley) than on the riggging (parcel & serve) hehe. What do these terms mean in context? I guess to parcel is to pad the parts that go around the ring(?) that one would then attach to the bottle screw? Do you treat before splicing, or do you treat once a year?

Further, what are swages and thimbles? Sorry if I seem thick, but I do not know much about rigging at all. (and the only dumb question is the unasked question I hope)

Cheers
Charles

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[CharlesM]

Mirelle

you have now added worms to the stew

What is it to worm rigging?

Thanks
Charles

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[Mirelle]

To worm a rope is to lay a small thread in the contlines of the rope so as to create a more smoothly cylindrical surface, before parcelling it (with tarred canvas - old fashioned electrical tape was ideal) and serving it with tarred marline. You then keep slapping tar on it twice a year and it lasts for ever.

This is 18th century stuff. Works fine for my old gaff cutter, would look a bit odd on a Beneteau!

May I recommend a book - "The Rigger's Apprentice", by Brion Toss.

<hr width=100% size=1>Que scais-je?

 

[Gordonmc]

Galv. rigging is still quite common if you look around. As others have said, its main benefit is a lesser risk of unheralded catastrophic failure.
Galv. will cost less than half the equivalent guage of stainless or even less if you can access through an industrial source. I got mine from a fishing net manufacturer for a bottle of brandy.
I used the old galvanised bottlescrews which go onto re-galvanised chainplates and gammon irons. I leave it to others to advise on use of SS bottlescrews, but I wouldn't.
Although I have spliced wire rope in the past I used swages on the advice of the netmaker who said a splice would give too much under tension.
Before going up the stays were dunked in hot waxoil. Twice a year the lower eyes, bottlescrews and iron ends are given a coat of molten lanolin. I did experiment with stockholm tar, but ended up repainting the deck... its messy stuff.
Where the stays might be grabbed they are protected with pipe which is loose enough to be pushed up for inspection and maintenance. Bamboo used to be used traditionally.
On the whole galv. is not as shiny as SS, but it is more robust, does not work-harden and is a lot cheaper


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[Plum]

another point of view

You have had lots of good advice about galvanised rigging, I also considered galvanised a few years ago, but the deciding factor for me was that insurance companies do not differentiate and are likely to not pay out for a claim if they find your wire is more than 10 years old no matter what it is made of. Instead, I went for 7X7 stainless steel and hand spliced the ends. 8mm diameter 7X7 can be bought for GBP2.5 per metre. Buy the book by Brion Toss (also called The Riggers Handbook). Once you have the knowledge, a source of good price SS wire and the shroud lengths., making up another set during the winter in tem years time is probably easier that maintaining Galv wire twice a year.

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[snowleopard]

terminology

ok, here goes...

i'm talking about putting eye splices in each end of the stay, these go round a metal thimble (teardrop-shaped with U cross section. this reinforced eye splice is known as a 'hard eye'. the end of the rigging screw has a fork with a pin through it, this (clevis) pin goes through the eye splice, the thimble prevents the wire being kinked over the small diameter of the pin.

to parcel is to wrap the rope, wire or splice with a tape. to serve is to wind twine tightly around the wire over the top of the parcelling. i pack the wire with grease after making the splice and before parcelling, the tape keeps the grease in place and i have never found any corrosion when i peel it off to check every couple of years.

a swage is where the end of a wire is placed inside a tube which is then subjected to extreme pressure to squeeze it onto the wire. swaged fittings are the norm on modern rigging.

and finally the reason i have given up stays is that my mast is an unstayed carbon fibre wing which rotates on a support post embedded in the hull


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[Richard_Blake]

What was that rhyme?...

Worm and parcel with the lay,
Seize and serve the other way...??

To confuse the issue a bit, we were taught that a wire racking seizing was generally better than a splice. Smack tradition, I think.



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[CharlesM]

Gosh

thanks all you people. This certainly has been informative and interesting.

I am certainly glad I found this forum - there seems to be about 100,000 years of experiance in here.



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[freebird1]

Just a thought about splicing / crimping eyes into the ends of your stay. When i had to replalce a broken back stay (another story), i took the remains to the rigger at Aladdins Cave (Deacons Boat Yard, Hamble). I was offered a replacement with crimped eyes at £27 or swaged fittings at £43. The rigger showed me how it opens up the lay of the wire when they put in the eyes, inviting weakness and corrosion. I took the more expensive option. This was for a 7 metre boat. Incidently the wire was probably ten years old anyway, but did not fail at the eye and showed no sign of corrosion.

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[boatless]

No comment on galvanised wire, no experience, but I would not use the old bottlescrews again. Imho, if there's any area of standing likely to fail catastrophically it's the fittings rather than the wire.

<hr width=100% size=1>my opinion is complete rubbish, probably.

 

[CharlesM]

Hi there Boatless

Could you maybe quantify your statement regardint the bottle screws? What would you use instead?

Thanks
Charles

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[freebird1]

I think he meant "replace your old bottle screws with ne ones", and i would agree.

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[boatless]

Freebird is right. Thread parts are prone to stress cracks and crevice corrosion, both very hard to detect.. St. steel threads often suffer from 'galling' where one thread picks up metal from it's opposite number, thus weakening one.

<hr width=100% size=1>my opinion is complete rubbish, probably.

 

[CharlesM]

Cheers for that.

Am I right in understanding then, that the bottle screws will/should be replaced regardless of the type of wire?

If going to galvanised rigging does it then make sence to replace the chainplates with galvanised steel ones? It seems that if one were to include that in your calculations the cost effectiveness of a change is gone.

Cheers
Charles

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[boatless]

Yes to q's one and two, and your conclusion looks inevitable!

<hr width=100% size=1>my opinion is complete rubbish, probably.

 

[nicktheboat]

Good to see the discussion on traditional rigging

I am currently refurbishing an 80 year old gaffer with all traditional rigging that has passed its sell by date - hence have taught myself the joys of liverpool eye splice, etc

Does anyone on this forum know where I could get a rigging vise (new, old, in need of a home). The only one I can find is at Brion Toss website and cost $750, which is just too much!

Any ideas or help very very welcome!

Nick

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