composite chainplates

[Stumble]

I would recommend titanium instead of bronze or stainless. Do it one right and never think about them again. Plus you can fill the slot between the hull and chainplates with epoxy to permanently seal up the hole.

[Mudita]

That's a good point about Titanium - I'm just catching up on reading previous threads on that option. Is it reasonable to say that using G5 Ti, I could reduce the chainplate cross section to about 35% of the current 316 Stainless, and save me both money and corrosion issues? That sounds like magic.

Regarding sealing up the deck hole permanently, what does experience show how well that would hold up given the temperature expansion issues with two dissimilar materials, plus flexing at the deck level? Would something like G-Flex work? Is there too much movement for that? Does it make more sense to leave a larger hole and fill with a highly elastic goop, acknowledging that the deck will never provide enough stiffness to keep the wiggling down?

[Stumble]

G5's UTS is 160 ksi vs 90ksi for 316 stainless so yes you can reduce size somewhat. The tricky bit is that it still needs to match the rigging hardware so you have to retain a large enough size to allow for proper fitting.

I was think of GFlex epoxy to fill the void. I know of one person who has done this without issues, but it has only been about two years so I can't say for certain that it will work long term. No matter how much flex there is in the GFlex, it's still less than the slot holes that were there from the old chainplates.

[Mudita]

That's very helpful -

I'm replacing all the standing rigging at the same time. I'm probably going with Colligo Dux, so I have the opportunity to fit out the chainplates-to-shroud connections however might be best.

I'm way out of my league when it comes to making that kind of determination, though. I've got a request into Colligo for suggestions.

Any good G5 Ti suppliers on the U.S. East Coast anybody can suggest? I've done a web search and found Allied Titanium does chainplates, but their prices are much higher than if I went with 316 Stainless. They advertise $288 for a G5 Ti chainplate for a Fuji 35, which I think is comparable with what I need. I could fabricate a 316 SS for about $45 and replace it 6 times before breaking even on the titanium investment.