straightening a bent stainless steel guardrail

[julians]

I have a windy 25, which is generally in pretty good condition, however at some point the stainless guardrail that runs round the bow has been bent slightly. Looks like somebody has stood on it when jumping into the sea. Its not a major bend, more of just a kink in one place between two uprights.

Does anyone have any tips for straightening this out? The guardrail itself is your fairly standard looking tubular steel affair as per most sportsboats.

 

[Pennpromo]

Julian, if it's bent down the easiest think is get a car jack put a big piece of wood on the deck to spread the load and jack it up. You will have to go a bit further than you think and it will "relax" again after. Simon

 

[julians]

It is bent down towards the deck. I had considered the car jack idea, but im not sure if the deck is flat enough/at the correct angle to allow the jack to push the rail back up.

Let me see if I can find some photos to work out ifthats an option

 

[JSYmartini]

There's a good chance you'll get it by just pulling on it. But whatever you try, make sure you don't rip the stanchions out of the deck!

 

[Poignard]

I would take it off the boat before trying to straighten it.

 

[julians]

Below is a photo of the rail in question, its hard to tell its bent out of shape from the photo, but if you saw it in person you would be able to see the bend.

I was wrong about the bend being between two uprights , its actually between where the rail curves down to meet the hull and the first upright, effectively just behind the VHF antenna in this photo.

So the rail is naturally curved, which I guess makes it harder to get back into the correct shape.

I had also considered removing the rail, but I think that would be quite a large job, and involve stripping most of the interior out.

I have tried to pull it back by hand, but was not succesful. I might have another go at this though.

 

[RogerRat]

Does anyone have any tips for straightening this out? The guardrail itself is your fairly standard looking tubular steel affair as per most sportsboats.

Hi,
Sorry, but your photo of the bend isn't much help. However, there is a practical fix that should not involve removing the guard rail but forget about jacking it up.You'll probably put a kink in it which will make it more difficult to sort or worse, do some damage to the mountings.

You need to speak to a steel fabricator. One that specialises in tube fabrication.
They have special tools for this which makes the job fairly straight forward, very bad kinks would be cut out and a new piece inserted and the weld polished.

The problem is getting one to your boat, time and distance will be the issue more than the actual task.

RR

 

[omega2]

looking at the picture it appears to be a one bolt fitting, with the bolt coming up through the topsides, if you give that any wellie you will destroy the fibre glass, as stated take the whole thing off before you try to fix it.