Plastic Classic Forum

On my San Juan 24, what's better to use on the mast head fore and back stay pins; cotters or rings? I have some rings that are like key rings ... real fingernail breakers ... that look as though they would hold well.

Comments anyone? Thanks!

Hi Peter,

A number of years ago, I remember a thread about this on the Montgomery list. An amazing number of people wrote in with their own personal tales of instances where split rings (I think that's what you call the keyring type) had failed. They had not broken, but had just come off. They were found lying on deck or someplace nearby, in one piece.

I was pretty incredulous, but we had the same thing happen to two or three of the split rings that held our lifeline gates on (until we changed them).

Granted, I don't think any of the examples were at the masthead (thankfully!), but I think I'd be tempted to go with good-old cotter pins.

I'm curious what others, who have more experience, will think about them.

--- Rachel

Peter,

Oops, I see you had already called them split rings. Didn't notice that until my post was on it's way.

--- R.

I would use cotter pins just about everywhere, particularly the masthead. Buy a large supply of various sizes that match the clevis pin diameters and hole sizes that you have, and use a new one whenever you remove the old. Old pins are the ones that get stuck and become immobile.

The absolutely proper way to install a cotter pin is to bend the legs out to a total of only 10 degrees, with only a small amount of the pin extending through the hole. This makes removal easy, even in an emergency, and also minimizes the "snag" factor. I started trying this method with new pins I install, and it's effective. I try to avoid tape at all costs.

I used to use cotter rings (split rings) in a few locations, but I've grown to kind of hate them. Right now, I have them installed in the lifeline turnbuckles, but that's it.

There's a really cool method of securing turnbuckles, by the way, using slim pieces of stainless steel welding rod. It's a Brion Toss innovation. It's pretty simple: using the correct size of SS welding rod for your turnbuckle holes, you bend a length of the wire into a sort of squared-off "C" shape with an opening the same as the distance between the two holes. Insert the legs through the holes, cut off most of the excess, and bend the remains parallel with the turnbuckle screws. Very neat and tidy, and requires no tape. I have a diagram and/or a link somewhere...I'll try to find it.

Perhaps it's a holdover from my dinghy and beachcat days, but I still use split rings and tape on some of my connections. Pros, cons, whatever, it's a known entity to me, and therefore I'm comfortable with it.

SS welding rod? cool. I read about that Brion Toss method in The Rigger's Apprentice and used it on my turnbuckles last year, but I must've missed the part about the welding rod. I just used regular old SS rigging wire.