Rhodes 19 chainplate replacement

[galleywench]

A very old, beat up 1963 Rhodes 19 followed me home from craigslist a few weeks ago and I've been going through and replacing just about everything. So far I've replaced and installed 8 of 10 transverse ribs that serve as a mounting point for floorboards and to hold the keel on. Pretty straight forward job but it definitely needed to be done.

Now I'm onto the chainplates. The originals (I believe they are original) were stainless steel upside-down 'T's glassed in place on the hull with no mounting hardware. I didn't hesitate to grind them out and start the job of replacing them because 60 year old stainless steel with no oxygen in a salty environment is not ideal.

So now that I have them out, I'm considering alternate re-installations. Many of the later model O'Day Rhodes 19s have a shorter upside-down 'T' chainplate that is through bolted on either side of the 'T' and the Stuart Rhodes 19s are straight chainplates with 2 through bolts.

New style chainplates for Stuart Rhodes

cp4.JPG (17.17 KiB) Viewed 2007 times

Somebody gave me advice to rebuild them as they are and re-glass over them and that through bolting them through the hull is not a good idea because of the 'high dynamic loads' (did not elaborate). Granted, the originals lasted a long time and would likely outlive me, but it seems to me that if I properly reinforced the hull in the area around the new chainplates and through bolting them (without glassing them in place) would be a better alternative.

My thought would be to clean up the existing area and reinforce the hull area with 4 alternating layers of unidirectional and biaxial glass followed by through bolting new straight chainplates to the reinforced hull. This would allow the chainplates to be relatively easily removed and inspected instead of having to grind out buried plates.

Sorry for the long winded post but does this sound like a reasonable alternative, or should I stick with the advice I got (and rebuild the same as original)?

Thanks

The old chainplates buried in glass

Time for replacement

Ground out

[atomvoyager]

My thought would be that as long as you strengthen the hull as described then they are best thru-bolted with butyl and not buried under glass. You just have to use your judgement on how thick and wide of fiberglass to reinforce the hull and if adding a knee near each one is warranted to stiffen the hull to deck joint. The knees could be small triangles of plywood or G10 board glassed to hull and deck. Or you could add any type of hull stringer to stiffen the hull. I don't think they'd be needed though on such a small rig.

[galleywench]

Thanks, I hadn't thought about adding knees or stringers to help stiffen the hull deck joint, but worth considering. I'm going to have to do a little more analysis before I make the call. The good news is that it is officially way too cold to do any epoxy work in New Hampshire until the spring, so I have some time to do some calculations and figure out the best solution.