We live about 60 miles east of the SF Bay Area. One day Rich went to a marine consignment shop in Alameda to consign some old boat stuff he had in his shop. While he was there he found a Barient self-tailing winch. While that shouldn’t seem surprising, it was. We rarely see self-tailing winches at this shop, or if we do they’re really expensive to the point that a new one is a better value. So the winch he found was priced at $125 with a handwritten note that said: “parts only.” He asked the shop worker what that meant and was told it was broken. Rich borrowed a wrench from the shop guy and took a peek inside. It looked totally intact to him, except that the tailing arm would spin freely.
Rich offered him $50 and he said yes. So now we were the owners of a broken self-tailing winch. Yay (and a forehead slap).
Back on the boat, Rich took the winch completely apart and couldn’t find anything wrong except the tailing arm. There was a small piece of plastic that he dug out of the top of the arm so he figured that piece of plastic is what broke.
Rich searched the internet for any information on this winch but came up empty. So the trick is how to manufacture a piece that would fit without ever seeing what the original piece looks like. He started with some moldable plastic to get a general idea if it would work. Then he made a mold from that piece and fabricated a more permanent solution with epoxy. After some tooling and shaping, he had a piece that worked. Now we have a nearly new, formerly broken, self-tailing winch. And all for a little over $50 and a few hours.
Nicely done! You perfectly exemplify the DIY culture of boating: knowledge + skill = $ saved.
I had never heard of that prototyping compound before – seems *very* useful. How did you come across it?
Bob
s/v Eolian
Anacortes
Hey Bob, thank you for checking us out. That little trick saved me several hundred dollars fixing a used winch rather than buying a new one. I learned about Insta Morph through my hobby of building spearguns for fishing. People I know have used it to make custom moulded grips for their gun handles. On a boat related subject, I’ve also used it to make custom battery terminal covers for the unusual sized lugs on our LiFePo battery bank.
Where do you all live east of the SF Bay? Do you live in the sailboat?
Hi Christopher – Yep, we live on the boat fulltime. Right now we’re in the Sacramento Delta at Owl Harbor Marina.