Rope Cutter for Beneteau Oceanis 311

kspirit53

Active Member
Joined
8 Jan 2006
Messages
46
Location
Home: Lancashire, Boat: Falmouth
Visit site
Any advice about the best rope cutter to fit to my Beneteau Oceanis 311? She has a 25mm diameter prop shaft with a sacraficial anode screwed into the end of the shaft, aft of the prop. I've heard that some rope cutters require a modified anode to be fitted.

Any helpful experiences would be most wecome.
 
Any advice about the best rope cutter to fit to my Beneteau Oceanis 311? She has a 25mm diameter prop shaft with a sacraficial anode screwed into the end of the shaft, aft of the prop. I've heard that some rope cutters require a modified anode to be fitted.

Any helpful experiences would be most wecome.

25mm is a common size, what matters more is the space between the forward boss of the propellor and the P-Bracket/aft end of cutless bearing. If you have 25-35mm there is a fair selection of different rope cutters available. If you have less space - you might have to fit a spacer between the gearbox & shaft - to generate clearance to fit the rotating part of the cutter. It's easier if the prop is off, but some types can be fitted with it in situ.
I fitted Spurs, since they have pretty good reviews - and anybody I've talked to with them was very positive. (http://www.haroldhayles.co.uk/spurs-home). Probably just under £400 fitted by your local engineer. Less if you're happy with drilling & tapping the P Bracket yourself. There's about half a dozen well known styles of cutter- either knife style or guillotine style blades. You pays your money ...;)
Nobody likes pot buoys, especially in poor light!

Graeme
 
Another vote here for Ambassador. Very well engineered. Take care if you have a folding ro feathering prop to allow some extra space between the prop boss and the cutter to allow the folding/feathering mechanism to operate.
 
I assumed that the Stripper would be the best rope cutter on the market and bought mine many years ago. It was perfect until it encountered a length of rope, when the striker plate ripped out of the P-bracket. Putting it down to some corrosion of the P-bracket material I bought a new striker plate and fitted it to a new P-bracket. Within a month one of my warps went overboard, around the prop and the second striker plate ripped out. The first rope was 14 mm polypropylene and my warp was 16 mm braid-on-braid nylon.

It seems to me that modern P-brackets are so thin that the fixing screws cannot be attached reliably. I bought a Prop-protector instead, which did just as well as the Stripper in the YM tests but does not have any fixed parts.
 
There are three distinct types.
1.Shaver (quicKutter)
2.Scissor (Spurs, Stripper, gator)
3.Disc (prop protector, shaft shark and several other sharp or serated discs)

We supply the shaver which is now used by the RNLI and the Royal Navy, so I may be biased, I am happy to list the competitors products on our website so that people can make a fare comparison.

When the first inflatable tyre was invented, if you asked a forum for advice on which make of tyre you should buy you would have had lots of people saying solid rubber is great and works for them.
 
I don't think that the refusal to allow the shaver type to be compared with the others in the YM tests did it any favours. There may have been justifiable reasons but it makes an informed decision impossible.

Would anyone be interested in those justifiable reasons? the test rig had a gap of over 60.00mm from prop blade root to P bracket being one of them...to fit the quicKutter to this test rig we would have (if possible) shortened the shaft by 50.00mm.
 
If anyone else knows how to you can embed this video and see the shaver cutter demo, it runs the shaft at slow speed so you can see how it works in this test the debris is trapped by one of the prop blades.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Top