Junkyard engineering a swivel block bracket

[MrPlywood]

My early 60's DS1 has a non-standard (as far as I can tell) swivel block mount, in that there's no pedestal built in to the CB trunk. The PO mounted the swivel onto the trunk's rear curved section which did not work well because the swivel was always dropping down. There is a brass plate at that spot, so I'm not sure what the original setup was. I had cobbled together a couple of stop-gap solutions over the last two years, and this year I was determined to rectify the situation for good.

So, a trip to our dump drop-off (the "tip" as it's politely called here) was in order. There's a large recycle bin for metal that gets filled with treasures. You're not supposed to pull items out, but the attendants look the other way. After all, it IS recycling.

I had a couple of ideas in mind depending on what I found, one of which involved a U-channel. Lo and behold, I spied a large ladder that had been tossed in. Its feet were two beautiful (cast?) aluminum U-channels. I quickly unbolted them and took them home.

The channel was an exact fit for the width of the trunk. With a little drilling (to remove the riveted on tread and "teeth" and to create mounting holes), jigsawing (to create the inset space for the trunk and to remove extra material), grinding (to fine-tune the fit and chamfer the edges) and polishing, I ended up with a very robust piece of hardware that works great and should last forever.

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[GreenLake]

Looks like a very nice bit of recycling!

Is the missing platform one of the design variations for early DS 1s? Have you checked the spreadsheet?

[Peterw11]

I like your solution. Simple and elegant. True shade tree engineering.

One question. How did you determine how much "meat" on the CB trunk was available to drill into. I want to mount my jib cleats to the trunk and that's a concern of mine.

Also, it looks like it may be a bit of a knee buster when switching sides while tacking. But I doubt if you do it once, it'll ever happen a second time.

[MrPlywood]

Thanks guys.

I added a column on the spreadsheet for this "feature" or lack thereof.

re: the "meat" on the trunk - there's a hole in the side of the trunk opposite the mounting plate for the front jib cleats (it's nice and clean, about 3/4" diameter - a vent maybe?) that allows me to see how thick the fiberglass is, and how much clearance to the CB. At that spot I'm guessing the thickness is about 1/8". Back where I mounted the bracket, the glass is thicker - it looks like it's built up with another layer or two so there was plenty to work with.

You can see my jib cleats here:

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They have triangular mounting plates (my kid's knee is obscuring the lower part of the rear cleat, and the starboard sheet is obscuring the hole). I found that the top two screws miss the CB because it doesn't reach that far into the trunk, but the third screw (original?) was too long and just missed the CB so I replaced that. I think I used pretty hefty screws for the bracket - #10 x 3/4" stainless (1/2" was fine for the cleats), pre-drilled the glass and hand screwed to make sure I didn't strip the hole.

re: knee-busting - that's why I rounded all the edges And I mounted the bracket "inside" the back edge of the trunk to help alleviate that possibility. It hasn't been an issue at all so far, but you never know when you get in a hurry.