Pinrail / butt braces

[Steve Laume]

I am finalizing a project I have been contemplating for a few years. I now have a fine set of pin boards for Raven's lower shrouds. These will also serve as a brace for my back side while standing on the cabin top and working at the mast.

They are heavy duty and have three holes, each, for belaying pins. I haven't turned the pins as yet but they will be 1/2" stainless or brass rod with wooden handles. The wood I am using for the handles is scrap from the building of the Amistad, at Mystic Seaport. A turners group I was active with at the time turned all the ship's belaying pins. As a thank you for our participation we were given a tour of the boat building facility. We also got to scrounge through a few pallets of scrap wood for our own use. I have been saving this wood for a worthy project and belaying pins for Raven seems a perfect fit. I did three pins for the Amistad and initialed the ends before they were placed aboard. My son managed to find a couple, when she was in port, several years after her launch. I like the way this project ties things together.

My question for the board is how best to tie the boards to the shrouds. Not so much the method as the material. It seems the shrouds should be seized and then the boards lashed to the shrouds. I believe this would have traditionally been done with tarred marlin. I do have some of this material somewhere and love the smell and the way it works. Would it still be the material of choice or would a more modern twine be a better choice? Heavy sail twine? A combination of marlin seizing and sail twine lashing? Has anyone else added pin boards?

This project will certainly add to the traditional look of Raven, eliminate halyard slap on the mast and add bit of extra security while working on deck. Windage and weight too but we are best not to make a point of that, Steve.

[tjr818]

Brian Toss has a section on adding wooden "ratlines" and how to attach them to stainless steel shrouds.
I think it is in his Sailing Apprentice book.

[Jim Davis]

Steve

While this is not traditional, but stronger with the smaller wire size we use. I have pinrails on Isa Lei and they are attached by drilling holes in the rail, then ripping the board lengthwise through the holes. Attach with bolts, a bolt on each side of the wire and clamp it tight. I also counter sunk the heads and nuts. I have tried seizing and it slips too easily on small SS wire.

I will also add that my pins are turned out of wood, they are plenty strong and float.

[Jim Cornwell]

I wonder: does the additional tension on the shrouds below the pinrail have no effect on the shrouds' performance? This set up must look pretty salty and must also reduce halyard slapping. True?

[Jim Davis]

Jim

When using a pinrail only light loads are applied by lines coming from aloft. If the line has a heavy load it should go through a hook/fairlead or turning block on the deck and back up. As to affect on shroud loading I only put halyards on the pinrail when they aren't in use. When under load I prefer them lead to the mast. This reduces the chance of the rail slipping and for reefing I want to stay inboard. Signal halyards, topping lifts and the like I leave on the pinrails.

Hope these thoughts help.

[tjr818]

This has moved to the top of my winter to do list. Does anyone have some pictures?

[fenixrises]

Hi all,

I am a great believer in my "Ass Planks". I found the slipping problem to be annoying.
To attach the planks I covered the wire for about 6" with split 1/4" nylon water hose. Then I attached the planks with two hole SS straps that fit snugly over the nylon. I used only SS sheet metal screws on the straps. Make sure you mount the planks on the inboard side of the shrouds. The main lateral thrust against the planks is from your butt pusing outboard.

To finally solve the up-down sliding I got 8 1/4" SS "Bull Dog" clamps(my lowers are 1/4" wire). Installing one above and one below the plank at each end solved the up-down thing.

My pins are only 1" dowel stock I found at the home builder place attached with a couple of screws to the outboard face of the plank.

My planks are not fancy nor I suspect very traditional looking except from 100 yards away but they do the job just fine and keeping my skinny ol butt aboard is a pretty important job to me.

I recommend them to anyone.

Take care,
Fred

[Ron M.]

Always liked the idea of pin rails. I determined the location and angle where the shrouds would pass thru the horizontal wood member. Using 2 pieces of 5/8 x 2-1/2" mahogany fastened together with ss machine screws/barrel bolts at the proper location 2 opposing angled holes were drilled on the centerline for the wire to pass thru. These holes were 1/8" larger to accommodate seizing wrapped on the shroud. I turned 3 belay pins for each side from locust wood. The rails locked tight to the shrouds. Only line that was not under load was stored there. They are very handy and salty but turned out to be a pain in the ass as jib sheets often fouled on them. Perhaps I need to noodle more on the location - I had them about 42" off the deck. I'll revisit this again.