I just uploaded four iPhotos of IDUNA’s bronze dodger coaming bracket. http://www.samlmorse.com/forum/gallery/album63 When we purchased the boat, the dodger bracket/foot was screwed directly to the coaming with two 1" #8 wood screws. To “beef up” the attachment point, I built a cap-bracket out of silicone bronze 3/16" sheet stock. A friend of mine did the bronze TIG welding. Each bracket is fastened to the coaming with four 1" #10 bronze wood screws. The dodger foot is fastened to the bronze bracket with two #10 machine screws.
More photos of IDUNA’s dodger are stored in IDUNA’s photo gallery at the forum. By-the-by, my lovely shipmate built the canvas dodger.
Cheers,
IDUNA
P.S. The dodger coamings are scheduled for refinishing this season.
Thanks for the photos and the idea. Our dodger hardware is also screwed into the coaming wood, and it has obviously been “re-bedded” several times, but is very loose and will never be secure again unless we come up with a more permanent fix. What you have done looks great.
OK, this is a FORUM, so I guess we should bat this around!? I’m very impressed with IDUNA’s creativity, and also with the bronze sheet stock welding. But, I wonder if screwing the foot of the dodger frame directly to the coaming isn’t good enough? What does it take to pull out, or shear off, those 1" wood screws that the bronze weldment replaced? I suspect that that force is enough to destroy the rather fragile dodger. Let’s assume that the wood of the coaming is sealed so that the screw and its hole don’t deteriate due to fungi.
I don’t remember the length of our wood screws, maybe 1", maybe 2"? When we were knocked down near NZ, the breaking wave didn’t budge the screws. The breaking wave did however tweak the dodger frame, bending it a bit, and we found out from the Kiwi SS shop in Whangarei that the wave had actually cracked in the tubing in one place, which he welded up, as will as fixing the bend! My guess is that a larger wave would have bent the tubing beyond usability, maybe destroyed the Sunbrella fabric, but that the wood screws would have held. If the screws hadn’t held, it wouldn’t have mattered–the dodger would have been toast.
Good point, Dan … I guess better to have the dodger pull out & retain its structural integrity than bend the tubes.
But in our case, the location where it has been repeatedly screwed into the coaming is a 1-inch mess of splinters and shredded screw holes. I’m not sure what to do, other than drill it out, fill with thickened epoxy, and re-drill. That is what I was planning to do until I saw Rod’s idea.
What do you think?
BTW, I think we should put this thread in a category. Should it be under “Deck Hardware” or “Sails & Canvas”?
I cut the coaming caps and tangs with a hacksaw out of 3/16 silcone bronze sheet - one new blade per 7" of cutting. A friend of mine TIG welded the tangs to the cap with bronze rod. The hardware and fitting on our boat are bronze, hence the need to maintain the theme.
I sourced the bronze drop from Farmers Copper in Galveston, TX. The other company to source drops is Admiral Metals. Another metal to use is Naval Brass - McMaster.com .
These coaming caps can not be made from stainless steel stock. A good machine shop or welding shop could fabricate a pair in 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
Ellen,
I guess the point I was trying to make was that a dodger, made from SS tubing and fabric, is a fairly fragile construction. To make its attachment to the cockpit coaming almost indestructable still leaves a fragile dodger. A serious wave will probably bend the tubing, regardless of whether the attachments pull out. Our serious wave bent and cracked the tubing but cockpit coaming attachments were OK. I think I had to reset some of the Lift-a-dot fasteners on the forward side of the dodger.
I’ve epoxy sealed and painted our cockpit coamings, so if I had your problem with the screw holes, I’d go the epoxy filler route. Another possible fix is to drill out the damaged area and put in matching-wood plugs. If you keep your coamings varnished, that might look better–I’ve used that method on our forehatch. If you’re not familiar with drilling the hole for the plug, get some advice, because you want a nice tight fit. Or, you can glue in a new piece–if your problem area is 1" as you say, a plug may not work.
Of course you’ll need to bed whatever you screw into the coaming so that water doesn’t get in to the hole and rot it out again. I use Boatlife polysulfide, but there are other choices.
Ahhh, Dan, thanks for the clarification. I thought that you meant to point out where the “engineered weak point” should be. I always try to think of that – so often an “improvement” turns out to cause worse problems down the road when the inevitable breakage happens!
I think – at least in the short term – I will go with the thickened epoxy fix. The coamings are varnished, and I’ve done enough epoxy/wood repairs that I think I can make it look good.
Thanks, Rod, for the bronze source. I have assorted ideas that would require sheet bronze fabrication. I would need to job the whole thing out, as my skills in that area are definitely not good enough for anything that would actually be seen by human eyes. But purchasing the material and then handing it and my design ideas over to a competent fabricator would save some money. The trouble is finding that welder! This is all, of course, in the future, lined up after my long list of essential work.
I am ready to build my boom gallows but cannot find an accurate height that the SLM company used to build them to. I have the bronze fitting so will have a curved top piece.
Thank you.
