who fancies a game of What's This?

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tomslade
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who fancies a game of What's This?

Post by tomslade »

Finally got the chance to fully rig Citrene today. Put up mast single handed and then played with a sails and rig tension.
Managed to answer many questions about how she goes together, but a few bits are still a mystery

1) what's this tube mounted on the boom?
https://www.flickr.com/photos/129843684 ... 771320957/

2) what's this lever arm thing mounted at the bottom left hand side of the mast?
https://www.flickr.com/photos/129843684 ... 977785251/

3) what are these two pullies for. Big one mounted right of the mast foot block, small one tired on with small rope to base of mast
https://www.flickr.com/photos/129843684 ... 977358852/

Am not sure I have the right set up for the kicker and down haul controls, but that can wait for another day.

Once again many thanks in advance.
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trebor
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Re: who fancies a game of What's This?

Post by trebor »

The piece of drainpipe is probably to prevent mainsheet from sagging.
The others not sure.
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JimC
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Re: who fancies a game of What's This?

Post by JimC »

tomslade wrote:1) what's this tube mounted on the boom?
Looks like spinnker pole or jib stick stowage to me.
tomslade wrote: 2) what's this lever arm thing mounted at the bottom left hand side of the mast?
3) what are these two pullies for. Big one mounted right of the mast foot block, small one tired on with small rope to base of mast
Its really hard to sort things out without seeing how everything relates. The kicking strap setup looks thoroughly unsatisfactory to me with that open hook into what appears to be the mounting bracket for a drum winch. I think that's likely to fail and needs to be done differently. If the drum winch has gone then it may only ever have been a nasty lashup and will need reworking. The lever thing is a puzzle, but I wonder if it was somehow related to the drum winch. If the winch was for centreboard rather than kicker it might have been a lock of some kind I suppose.
You mast base blocks might just have been turning blocks for halyard tails - if the main halyard pulls down for instance a turning block on the floor makes the main at least twice as easy to hoist.
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jpa_wfsc
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Re: who fancies a game of What's This?

Post by jpa_wfsc »

2) The lever, is the ratchet catch that holds the missing drum winch from unwinding on the load from the kicker strap. The cast alluminium drum had a kind of gear cast in to it. To release the kicker you had to first lift the lever up, and the hole in the end of the lever was for the tail of the winding rope to go through. Like a cam cleat, lift and pull to release, just pull to tighten and hold. An Ok I sailed back in 1970 ish had the same (nasty) beast mounted on the boom to work the kicker.
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Re: who fancies a game of What's This?

Post by phil58490 »

I have the plastic version of the kicker drum, axle and bracket in working order, free to a good home, if you want it. It doesn't have the ratchet function though so you would have to use a cleat somewhere. PM me an email address and I'll send you a picture as I have never managed to get a picture on here.
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mph1977
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Re: who fancies a game of What's This?

Post by mph1977 »

1. spinaker pole holder

2, it;s had a drum kicker at some point

3. fitting to lead one of the secondary controls back
tomslade
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Re: who fancies a game of What's This?

Post by tomslade »

Thanks for all the answers.
Interested in finding out more about drum kickers, Googleing drum kickers just gets you percussion accessories!
I hope more will become clear when I get her in the water, when ever that might be!
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Re: who fancies a game of What's This?

Post by JimC »

tomslade wrote:Thanks for all the answers.
Interested in finding out more about drum kickers, Googleing drum kickers just gets you percussion accessories!
I hope more will become clear when I get her in the water, when ever that might be!
Back in the day they were horrible things. A rod went through the hole in your bracket, and on one end was a drum about 5" diameter. You wrapped a flexible wire rope round the rod, and put a control line on the drum. Quite low friction for the time, but the wire chewed up horribly on no time. Would actually work much better with a high tech rope!
tomslade
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Re: who fancies a game of What's This?

Post by tomslade »

Is this the kind of thing I an missing?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sailing-Dingh ... 19fdc0c6db

Looks very heath Robinson to me...
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PeterV
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Re: who fancies a game of What's This?

Post by PeterV »

I have a drum kicker on Django, my Finn. It works very well even though the primary part is still wire, so I think their problems are more to do with set up than anything else. I'm Sure it could be improved with a modern rope instead of the wire but as it works I've left it alone.

Yes, that's the bit, looks quite a modern one, mine is tufnol.
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chris
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Re: who fancies a game of What's This?

Post by chris »

I think I have the bits somewhere if you want.
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Re: who fancies a game of What's This?

Post by dronskiuk »

JimC wrote:
tomslade wrote:Thanks for all the answers.
Interested in finding out more about drum kickers, Googleing drum kickers just gets you percussion accessories!
I hope more will become clear when I get her in the water, when ever that might be!
Back in the day they were horrible things. A rod went through the hole in your bracket, and on one end was a drum about 5" diameter. You wrapped a flexible wire rope round the rod, and put a control line on the drum. Quite low friction for the time, but the wire chewed up horribly on no time. Would actually work much better with a high tech rope!
I agree they weren't very kind to wires and occasionally snagged loose ends of rope but on the plus side they added (if I remember correctly) an instant 7-1 purchase to what you had set up. EG - if you had a 4-1 from the boom it became a 28-1 by adding one of these...my beautiful Avacraft also had a kicker lever...another vicious bit of kit but with the drum made adjustment easier and crews soon got used to ducking or being scalped! :shock:

I replaced mine with a lightweight ball block dual-control that was much more crew-friendly and worked like a dream!
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Re: who fancies a game of What's This?

Post by Ian Malcolm »

Its not just kickers that can benefit from a drum winch. They offer a lot of mechanical advantage in a very small space and are far more efficient and less hassle than a muscle box. They also have a lot of travel for a tackle that powerful. I reckon the Holt Allen one was about 10:1 (by measuring ratio of shaft diameter to drum diameter).

I used one for centerplate tackle loaded with 3mm D12 Dyneema and posted about it a few years back: viewtopic.php?p=9854#p9854

The key to satisfaction with a drum winch is the lines/wires on both ends of it *MUST* have a fair lead to it that isn't biassed to one end or the other, and must *NEVER* be allowed to get totally slack. Ignore this and you get riding turns on the shaft which would chew up any wire pretty rapidly, or the control line jumps off the drum and you suddenly find your self with the tackle all the way out and no way to haul it in, or just with a solid jam-up. I suspect that control line jumping could be cured by mounting a strip of springy plastic to ride against the line on the drum so even if the tail is slack, existing turns cant loosen, but in my application, all it took was to learn to let the tackle do its job rather than trying to muscle the plate around, and if something else forced the plate up, to take up the slack gently before letting it back down.

Its also desirable to keep one turn on the shaft at the fully extended position. If its allowed to run all the way out, the line/wire rapidly gets worn where it enters the shaft and is secured.

In a kicker application, to avoid riding turns and chewed wire, the distance from the last turning block to the wire hole in the bracket would have needed to be large, the block should not have been moving side to side with the boom, and it would have been important to manually pretension the upper part of the kicker when rigging the boat so the wire wound evenly when the drum was first used. I doubt most installations were that carefully planned or used, and the usual mast-foot installation with the wire going straight out of the bracket hole and diagonally towards the boom would have been fairly sub-optimal and repeatedly sailing a triangular course, when the tackle would have been set up on port tack at the leeward mark, biassing the wire to one side of the drum and let off on starboard tack at the windward mark, couldn't have been kind to the wire.
Last edited by Ian Malcolm on Thu Apr 02, 2015 11:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
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alan williams
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Re: who fancies a game of What's This?

Post by alan williams »

Hi
When Graham brought FD K350 Rodney Pattison's last Superdos....... it was fitted with loads of drum winches. Some adjusted the mast rack and shroud tension. The wire wore pretty quickly and it was difficult to calibrate due to uneven stretch on each side. The wire was replaced with hitec non-stretch which made it both easier to setup as more flexible and easier calibrate, and saved small amount of weight. Use drum winches with no stretch rope, they are then worth using.
Cheers Al
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Re: who fancies a game of What's This?

Post by Ian Malcolm »

Yes, I'm surprised how long my original 3mm D12 lasted. I changed it a couple of years ago as it was looking a little tatty. It was still plenty strong enough and I could have end-for-ended it, but couldn't be ar**d to unpick the stopper knot inside the drum shaft and the very tight double anchor bend at the other end of it to keep enough length.
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