Serviced Windlass

No luck with my previous plea.

So, between Jonny and I we got the windlass apart, cleaned all the gears inside, and re-oiled the whole thing.  Karen cleaned up the wooden pad on the foredeck where it is mounted, then I faired it with epoxy fairing compound (we had taken some big chunks out of it while trying to get the windlass off), sanded smooth, and painted it with an epoxy primer (primekote).  Eventually I’ll have to put two coats of something different on it after it yellows, but there’s no time now.

Jonny dismantled the windlass, but wasn’t around when it time to put it all back together . . . boy was that NOT fun.  There is no manual for this windlass, anywhere; I spent a long time looking around the internet, inquiring in forums, etc.  So just figuring out how the one-way bearings all went back together was a challenge.

Eventually I figured it out, all the parts got cleaned spick and span, I rinsed out gunk and metal filings from the housing so it was all pristine, put it all back together, and added nice fresh oil.

But the real bitch was the very last step: trying to get the bronze hand wheel back onto the stainless shaft.  The threads at the end were all mangled and cross-threaded, and I spent hours, literally hours, just messing with trying to screw the wheel back onto the shaft, without forcing anything.  No matter what I tried, including gentle filing to clean up the threads, nothing worked.  The shaft was a standard size, but the pipe thread on the shaft was a custom-sized pitch–meaning I couldn’t find any taps/dies online that would work on the threads.  I put it aside for a while.

Pete showed up and managed to get the handwheel to thread on the shaft.  Didn’t do anything special, just sat there and messed with it and got it to work.  Now it’s saying something for someone to best me on a task like this, which is to say that Pete is a phenomenon.  I’m just thankful we didn’t have to scrap the whole windlass for this one little problem, especially after I spent so much time making everything so clean and pretty.