Rebedding the hawse pipe

Please welcome Scott of s/v Valkier to the list of contributors! Scott runs a website dedicated to the Downeaster sailboats (you might recall that Eolian is a Downeaster 45) - if you have a Downeaster and haven't been to his site, you are remiss. Here he talks about rebedding a hawse pipe:

Another project that needed immediate attention was the port hawse pipe on Valkyr. I was walking up to her on the dock and just happened to notice that the hawse pipe was about to fall off. So I pulled it all the way off. I thought some of the rest of you would be interested in how the sides of the boat here are designed. It is hollow up in there.


This is a project that needs to be revisited. I found that the holes the bronze wood screws are going into need to be re-glassed and drilled again. (you heard it correctly all that as holding it in is some wood screws. Actually what it needs is not wood screws but machine screws that go all the way through to the plate on the inside and I need to tap threads into the plate and and have the bolts hold them together. Right now I have new bronze screws in place and lots of 3M 4200 as bedding compound. It is working but not as strong as I would like it to be.
While I had the hawse pipe out I polished it up also. here are some before and after shots. I just used a little generic polishing compound and some 3M 1500 grit sand paper. I tried using a scotchbrite pad but it just didn’t get the job done. The 1500 grit got the job done and left a very smooth surface. Smoother than it was to start with.



And here it is installed. I actually had to take it back out after this and turn the hawse pipe over as it it didn’t fit flush to the plate on the inside. You can see this in the picture.

I like the idea of thru-bolting the hawse pipes, especially considering the strain they take tied to the dock in a blow. I should thru-bolt Eolian's (boy, my list of "shoulds" is getting long!)