SS How I Loath Thee--Let Me Count The Ways

[John Stone]

We are finishing up some minor work on the bowsprit so it was time to clean the rust off the SS associated Bobstay and 'spritshroud stay hardware. Though I spliced the wire to bronze thimbles when I rerigged the Far Reach I was unable to eliminate all the SS hardware. SS is simple unable to compete with good bronze in the marine environment. It is a pity good bronze hardware is so expensive and hard to come by. You almost have to make your own toggles and clevis pins these days. We occasional find used bronze hardware but often it is beat to hell and not worth the risk. But, slowly we are working our way there.

I bathed the SS turnbuckle rigging screws and strap-tangs tangs for six hours in a Stella Solution's Citrus 77 then buffed them with Caldwell Emory polish and a buffing wheel. Maybe he polish will hold off the corrosion and rust. Bronze over SS any day.

[Jim Walsh]

R&W Rope still sells Alexander Roberts jaw/jaw open body bronze turnbuckles. Like all good things they are priced accordingly.
When I replaced all my standing rigging a few years ago I bought stainless 1X19 and trimmed it to length at home. I used Sta-Lok end fittings since I wanted to make my own standing rigging. I retained my original open body bronze turnbuckles primarily because bronze will routinely stretch, not spontaneously break. I figured I might have some warning before a failure. My bronze turnbuckles are in their 33rd year of service.

[John Stone]

Copy Jim. I too used as many of the original bronze turnbuckle bodies as I could and bought additional new bronze bodies from Sta-loc to make up difference. But I had to keep the original SS rigging screws and bought new SS rigging screws to go with the new bronze bodies. My original standing rigging was 9/32 for head stay, back stay, and cap shrouds. The rest were 1/4". I replaced everything with 5/16 wire which meant I had to replace all those 3/8" turnbuckles for the 1/4" riggging with 1/2" turnbuckles.

It was the best I could do at the time. The all bronze Sta-loc were three times the cost of the SS. I needed (10) 1/2" turnbuckles. So that would have been $3k if I went all bronze. I decided to live to fight another day. So I have bronze bodies with SS screws all around connected to bronze thimbles and spliced wire. The bronze never gives me trouble. But, like most sailors my pockets only go so deep.