stanchion base

[Gunfleet]

my Nicholson 26 has stanchion bases which I think may have been home brewed in Burnes's shipyard - a welded stainless socket with a threaded single welded stainless bolt through the deck. Are these common? I need to find one as the one next to the cockpit has sheared after 50 years of people pulling themselves up on it. Is it a type and is there a source? I can only find weedy things with three or four screw holes on fleabay. Mine takes a 22mm nut under the deck which so far I've failed to shift!

 

[PuffTheMagicDragon]

I turned something similar out of Aluminium Bronze some years ago for a friend. Subsequently he found a source in Holland and got some more, relatively inexpensively. His boat is an old Dehler so that might be a good lead if you have Dehler boats or dealers close by. The bases on my old Centurion 32 are quite similar except that the stanchion fits over a cylindrical base instead of in a socket. So, it seems that even French builders of the era were using them as well.
If you cannot find a ready-made replacement it should not be a big deal to have a couple machined from solid if you can provide a good one to serve as a pattern.
I believe that there are forum members who have engineering workshops; they might be able to sort you out.

p.s. The easiest way to 'shift' the nut would be to take a nut-splitter to it or, failing that, a little angle grinder... used carefully.

 

[Topcat47]

p.s. The easiest way to 'shift' the nut would be to take a nut-splitter to it or, failing that, a little angle grinder... used carefully.

There speaks one who’s never owned a Nic26. You’d not get either close to my stanchion nuts. A long af socket will be needed, it’s not a metric thread. I can’t remember the size. From memory, I also used a long extension bar and a torque wrench on mine, but that was 10 years ago. Get the old one off, use it as a pattern, then have the new one use metric studding. Mine had 1/4” nuts as well as the big gun. Good luck!

 

[Gunfleet]

Thanks Tom and Puff. The bolt or stud is sheared at the deck surface. Unfortunately there's no chance of putting a nut splitter or angle grinder in there. A 22mm spanner fits from underneath, but of course doesn't shift. A deep socket is a good idea and I have a substantial torque wrench on the boat. Looking at it again, I think I could drill out the really substantial stanchion base and run a metric bolt down through it. Of course I've still got a blooming great sheared stud to get out from a galley cupboard behind a stove. That will be fun. But at least I don't have to start by sourcing a stanchion base. And if the worst comes to the worst, as it's sheared at deck level I could also take one of my new cobalt drills and drill down the stud until it collapses.

 

[PuffTheMagicDragon]

There speaks one who’s never owned a Nic26. /QUOTE]

That's true, although my Centurion is not much better in that respect. To get at the things (they are also glassed over) one needs to remove the lockers in the cabin, which is bad enough, and the teak ceiling that is all over the inside of the hull, bar the cockpit locker! Awkward, certainly, but it can be done... although, preferably, not at my age; 71 last December.