1 X 19 SS Rigging Wire ???

BCC Forum
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Ahoy All , somewhere I heard it said, (probably from L & L seminar) that USA spec 1 X 19 SS rigging wire has a full diameter dimention, ie: 1/4" dia., is actually v close to 1/4" ,

Where as foreign specified similar wire is a little less in diameter dimention ?

My understanding of producers of rigging wire is incomplete , mostly hear-say at best, drats !

I need to purchase new SS standing rigging, way over here in S E Asia, and would welcome any advice on purchase information .

I will be re-using my existing Sta-Loc eye terminals so the compatable wire dimention becomes important, ouch !

Currently, I can purchase Arcus wire manufactured in Oz , only in milimeter dimentions , but have no information of where that wire originates from, expect it may come from Korea , but who knows ?

I want high quality wire , to " build-in a reserve of neglect " ( as Brion Toss advises) , but have budget restraints, too !

We were quoted from Precision Shipwrights in Phuket , a 6 mm 316 1 X 19 ss wire price of USD $ 2.84 per foot , is this reasonable for Arcus wire ?

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I was impressed by the http://riggingonly.com/ website, which has a
lot of detailed information on rigging wire, fittings and technical
quality considerations. They gave very specific attention to my
questions when I called a few years ago them to order wire and Stayloc
or Norseman fittings for a bobstay replacement and backstay SSB
antenna insulators. Even if you do not order from them, the info you
seek may be available on their website.
Scott

On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 7:02 PM, BCC Forums bccforums@samlmorse.com wrote:

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Douglas: Hi!

I think you’re right and that the s/s wirerope sold by Arcus is manufactured by KOSwire (Korea Original Stainless), probably in Korea or in China. I don’t think anyone manufactures s/s wirerope in Australia anymore.

KOS is one of the big manufacturers of s/s wirerope.

The Arcus website is of little value, other than for their admission that they’ve been rebranding KOS wire for 20 years or more (see http://www.arcuswire.com/aboutus.html).

There’s a copy of the Arcus catalog at: Stainless Steel Wire Rope & Strand Catalogue 2012-13 (Arcus Wire Group) by Arcus Wire Group - Issuu

That catalog (page 6) lists Hamma 6.4 mm 1x19 316 wirerope as having a diameter of 1/4". So you would need 6.4 mm to suit your fittings. The catalog quotes the Minimum Breaking Strain of 6.0 mm wire rope at 29.7 Newtons versus 33.8 Newtons for 6.4 mm wire.

On price, I’d suggest comparing with the price of Brite-Stay wirerope in the US. Brite-Stay is now marketed by Alps Wire Rope ( http://alpswirerope.com/proddir.htm ) but I don’t know where that is manufactured these days. What happened to Loos? When Zygote was built, I think Loos owned the Brite-Stay brand.

The West Marine catalog should give you a benchmark on prices (given that we are all aware of West Marine’s reputation on prices): http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?productId=168801&catalogId=10001&langId=-1&storeId=11151&APPARELCOLOR=&storeNum=50045&subdeptNum=50088&classNum=50090

The West Marine catalog lists 1/4" Brite-Stay 1x19 316 wirerope as having a Breaking Strain of 6,900 lbs. I make that equal to 30.69 Newtons (ie kilo-newtons, or 30,692 newtons), suggesting that someone is exaggerating or Hamma wire by KOS is a tad stronger.

My big suggestion is to get a price from the rigger in Phuket for 6.4 mm wirerope. I would not want to try to fit your 1/4" Sta-Loc fittings to 6.0 mm wirerope.

Cheers

Bil (who has taken 6 edits to remove typos and errors! I gotta learn me to type proper one day)

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Bil Wrote:

where that is manufactured these days. What
happened to Loos? When Zygote was built, I think
Loos owned the Brite-Stay brand.

Loos is still around, see http://www.loosco.com/index.php?page=yacht-rigging-cable

The West Marine catalog lists 1/4" Brite-Stay 1x19
316 wirerope as having a Breaking Strain of 6,900
lbs. I make that equal to 30.69 Newtons

On their webpage, Loos also quotes 6,900 lbs as the minimum breaking strain of 1/4" 316 1x19 wire rope. And says that the origin is ‘domestic’, ie made in the US!

What’s more, on their download page, Loos has an iPhone app (and a PC one too) for calculating the stretch of wire rope! Who knew?

UPDATE: the iPhone app has no stretch figure for 316 s/s wirerope; only for 302. That suggests that stretch is not something associated with 316.

Cheers

Bil

5

I have had great service from a company called Engelmann in Hanover, Germany.
Although I haven’t had the need yet to replace my rigging, I have bought cable from them for various high profile installations, where the highest quality 316 grade was necessary.
They carry out swaging and do all their own winding into your desired combination, size and specification.
I am in Dubai, and so am far from many of the commercial centres and sources of such materials. They exported in a timely and efficient way with all correspondence in English.

Stephan La Roche is the manager. laroche@engelmann-online.de

ENGELMANN Drahtseilfabrik GmbH
Eckenerstra?e 7
30179 Hannover
Phone: +49 511 63983-0
Fax: +49 511 63983-99

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Thank You , Scott , Bil , and Mike , all your replies are important to me, together we will sort this acquisition out .

B T W , has anyone found information on chemical tests on SS to determine , nickle content , chrome content , and iron content ?

One day I was in the fastener shop here in S’pore , and the counter salesman was using an eyedroper bottle and acid to check on some incoming stock.

He was testing SS bolts n screws for Nickle content , and he became v secretive about what he was doing .

He did say that this acid testing is not available to end users like us sailors.

Of course I Googled and searched for an outlet , to get a test kit like he had, but found No Joy , except for a nickle test kit for people who are alergic to nickle plated jewlery.

An Atomic Absorbtion test is way beyond my means, but that is , so I am told , the only sure way of asertaining the alloy composition of the different SS we use on our boats .

I still purchase my SS fasteners from that shop , but that salesman is still tight lipped , like a clam out of water , Ouch !

Any ideas out there ? Yes, I did try a spark test like we do on aircraft chromoly steels , but that testing method flopped !

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I can only point you back to Engelmann, in the knowledge that they will be able to tell you with typical German precision, the exact make-up of their cable!

Mike

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Let me tell you a story quickly:

Back in the mid-1980s I was living in Taipei, Taiwan. One of the few other foreigners around was a young US guy, who was trying to make his way as a middleman in trade/commerce. He, let’s call him Mike, got a contract from a US fixings firm for x tons of y size bolts and nuts of z% chromium, w% nickel, etc. Mike arranged the supplies of chromium, nickel etc and went to a Taiwan bolt manufacturer to contract the fixings. Then Mike spent some quality time with a gorgeous girl with long black hair. A few weeks later, Mike loaded the fixings in a shipping container and sat back to wait for his Letter of Credit to turn into bars of gold and the good life. Never happened. The LC was cancelled. Story is the fixings failed the first analysis. And that the Taiwan bolt factory just sold the chromium and nickel, and then delivered Mike a bunch of nuts of under-spec steel. Mike’s mistake was to goof off with Miss Long Black Hair and not be at the factory every day to check on manufacturing and quality.

That’s why quality testing is important and no-one trusts written specs without a test or a certificate.

Your mate in Singapore was doing much the same thing you do when you use phosphoric acid to clean and passivate s/s. It’s not so much the nickel he’s testing for, it’s the chromium content.

You can tell 316 from lower grade s/s (such as 304) or from mild steel with a drop of strong Nitric Acid or strong Sulfuric Acid.

Nitric and Sulfuric are more aggressive than Phosphoric. The lower the chromium content, the more fizzing, as iron atoms that are not surrounded by chromium atoms react with the acid, forming an iron salt and releasing hydrogen gas (ie the fizzing); if you use Nitric Acid, brown fumes will rise from mild steel and 304. High chromium content (eg 316 and 316L) shows as no fizzing and (if using Nitric Acid) no brown fumes. *** Careful! Strong Nitric and Sulfuric burns skin, eyes etc. ***try on some waste steel or rigging. *** wear safety specs *** don’t breathe the fumes of nitric acid or sulfuric acid *** don’t run with scissors or watch broadcast tv or swim right after a meal.

Read the A to Z of Materials (AZOM) for example tests: http://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=1234

So your mate in Singapore was probably using either Nitric or Sulfuric Acid. He’s done it before and knows exactly what to expect from a drop of acid on 316, 304, or mild steel.

Cheers

Bil

1 Like
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T Y again Mike , I did go to the Engelmann website and printed out their standing rigging webpage on buying wire . I am just afraid that the shipping costs from Germany would be beyond my budget .

After all , it was German metalergists who first gave us Stainless Steels !

It was interesting that Engelmann does their own breaking strength testing and according to their listed table, 316 ss 1/4" 1 x 19 rated at working load limit of 6900 lbs ., broke under their applied load of 7995 lbs

Thank You too, Bil , as I completely missed that website , azom.com , and I find it “Spot On” , for the information I was looking for, on testing ss alloys.

Of course now I will be looking for a source of nitric and sulpheric acids to practice my own testing results , and that shouldn’t be hard to find here in Singapore.

Thanks too , Bil , for reminding of the cautions, no swimming after eating, ect., and it is true that one drop of Hydrofloric acid will eat through your skin, right down to bone , Ouch !

BTW I am still a little confused about 6 mm dia., vs 6.4 mm dia., to be used with my 1 / 4" Sta-Loks , mostly because the Sta-Lok packaging lable on my eye terminals show 1/4" or 6 mm .
I also see this double spec on the Sta-Lok packaging lable for my 9/32" eye terminals, 9/32" / 7 mm ???

10

Douglas: Hi!

Of course now I will be looking for a source of
nitric and sulpheric acids to practice my own
testing results , and that shouldn’t be hard to
find here in Singapore.

The simplest test, when buying s/s shackles etc, is to carry a magnet. 304 or 316 s/s should not attract a magnet - but mild steel will.

I personally think we can trust the s/s rigging wire from KOS via Arcus. But having a small dropper bottle of nitric or sulfuric acid, so you could put one drop on a short length of waste wirerope, would be fun!

BTW I am still a little confused about 6 mm dia.,
vs 6.4 mm dia., to be used with my 1 / 4" Sta-Loks
, mostly because the Sta-Lok packaging lable on my
eye terminals show 1/4" or 6 mm .
I also see this double spec on the Sta-Lok
packaging lable for my 9/32" eye terminals, 9/32"
/ 7 mm ???

I reckon that 1/4" Sta-Lok fittings were made for 1/4" wirerope. And the exact equivalent of 1/4" is 6.35 mm. The Arcus catalog clearly lists 6.4 mm Hamma 316 as equal to 1/4".

I reckon that Sta-Lok put 6 mm there as an approximation.

I suspect that if you used 6.0 mm wire rope with your Sta-Lok fittings, the cones you insert in the wirerope to spread the wire would not give a perfect grip between the fitting and the wirerope. You might get a good enough joint to last for years, as long as you didn’t have to work through a hard squall.

Bottomline: I wouldn’t trust 6.0 mm wirerope in 1/4" Sta-Lok terminals on Zygote.

I really recommend you contact the shipyard in Phuket and get a quote on 6.4 mm Arcus wire.

If 6.0 mm was good enough, why would the Arcus catalog bother to include 6.4 mm wire and list it as equivalent to 1/4"?

I make 9/32" as equivalent to 7.11 mm. 7.0 mm wire is probably close enough - only a different of 0.11 mm (that’s 4 mils, if you remember the old engineering precision measure). Contrast that with a difference of 0.4 mm, which is equal to 15.75 mils! 0.4 mm might only be 0.02" but it’s too big a difference for me!

Get 6.4 mm wirerope for your 1/4" fittings. Please.

Bil

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It was interesting that Engelmann does their own
breaking strength testing and according to their
listed table, 316 ss 1/4" 1 x 19 rated at working
load limit of 6900 lbs ., broke under their
applied load of 7995 lbs

I reckon all wirerope manufacturers under quote on Minimum Breaking Strain to cover themselves. If they said 7995 lbs and it broke at 7800#, someone would make a claim for damage against them. So they quote the MBS as 6900 lbs because they are confident that even wirerope that is 10 years old will not break at 6900 lbs.

Of course now I will be looking for a source of
nitric and sulpheric acids to practice my own
testing results , and that shouldn’t be hard to
find here in Singapore.

Take care. If you use sulfuric acid (which is probably cheaper and more readily available than nitric acid), mild steel will fizz and give off some H2S (hydrogen sulfide). H2S is toxic - if you are leaning over it and breathe it in.

Strong nitric acid is sometimes sold as ‘fuming nitric acid’. Fuming nitric will give off brown fumes on mild steel - and I would expect those fumes to also be toxic.

Fuming nitric acid is both safe and dangerous. It fumes when in contact with the humidity in air. As soon as it contacts any water, it becomes a very strong acid. If it is 100% nitric acid, its acidic activity is surprisingly low (as a chem student at college, I once accidentally poured some over my arm! not a problem). But if a drop of sweat had been on my arm, I would have been racing right fast to the safety shower and screaming in agony.

*** don’t add water to an acid; dilute acid by adding a tiny quantity of acid to water. If you add water to an acid, the acid can splatter as the water contacts it.

My recommendation - if really want to, buy the smallest quantity of concentrated sulfuric acid and try it on 316, 304, and mild steel somewhere out in the open and with a pail of water nearby. Even better, just take a short length of waste wire rope along to your fixings retailer and ask him to test it for you.

I recommend avoid fuming nitric acid. It’s scarily dangerous. And doesn’t have a place or use on Calliste or any other boat.

Cheers

Bil

12

T Y , Bil , for that info , all of which I didn’t know , Phew !

Looks like I have to contact Sta-Lok for their spec perameters .

Most of my knowledge is sort of “seat of the pants”, with no real background in Chemistry and Engineering , a college of “Hard Knocks” is the certificate I hold !

Yes , I too , like to experiment as well , just ask my son what we did with those Estes Rocket Motors , and rockets as well , heaps of satisifying booms and bangs !

Well , Ok , I will keep the forum posted on what I learn , and the “Why” of my choices .

13

Looks like I have to contact Sta-Lok for their
spec perameters .

If you look at http://www.stalok.com/online_shop_families.asp?sector=Marine&sec_id=1575 you’ll see that Sta-Lok now lists metric terminals and imperial terminals.

My guess if you bought your Sta-Lok terminals stateside. And that they are imperial 1/4". So 6.4 mm wire rope will fit better than 6.0 mm. And 6.4 mm has a min breaking strength a bit higher than 6.0 mm wire.

So 6.4 mm gives you the reserve of neglect you need. Buying new cones (Sta-Lok calls them ‘wedges’, the inserts you put among the wire strands to spread them out) also gives that reserve of neglect.

Cheers

Bil

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Gee , Gosh , You are Absolutely Right Bil , What I Do Want is a Reserve of Neglect , on my boat .

No close encounters or un-necessary exposures , especially if an un-anticipated event is possible onboard Calliste .

It must have taken a heap of your time to get the knowledge you share with us , I guess your BCC Praxcis would expose that ?

I want to be v carefull with this rigging wire, purchase , as I have already been exposed to a rig failure possibility and of course this Lyle Hess BCC , brought her crew home safely, after those nasty blows, onroute to N Z , Phew !!!

Ok , now on to Sta-Lok’s customer service , way out here , where the sun sets !

15

Sta-Lok replies : Hi Douglas,

Thank you for the email.

I?m pleased to say that as long as you use the metric wedge & former for the wire, the fitting will be fine to re use.

Also Rolly Tasker a rigging Loft in Phuket replies : Hi again Douglas
I got a reply from StaLok confirming what you said earlier i.e. one can use fittings for 1/4"wire on metric 6mm wire assuming the wedge would be the specific one for the 6mm wire. Please see attached picture for you reference
Same for 7/32" wire and 7mm wire
Same for 3/8" and 10mm wire

Prices per M of 316 SS 1x19 would be the following :

6mm diameter X 241? (73.46M) long - THB 268.00 /M - Total THB 19,687.28.00
7mm diameter X 84? (25.60M) long - THB 304.00 / M - Total THB 7,783.37
10mm diameter X 2? (0.61M each ) long X two pieces (total length 1.22M) - THB 608.00 / M - Total THB 741.76

Prices ex works Rolly Tasker Thailand
include 7% VAT for a delivery in Thailand. No VAT applies if shipped overseas by an official forwarding Company
All above items in stock at today’s date
Payment terms : cash on order

Best regards

–
JP RICQUIER
Mast & Rigging Dept Manager

All this taken into consideration , I still agree with Bil’s reccomodation to use 6.4 mm 1 X 19 ss wire in my Imperial 1/4" Sta-Lok Terminals .

Many Thanks Bil , for the "Heads - Up " .