Bostic Marine 920 for Bedding Deck Hardware ?

[ShipShape]

Drill out a hole the size of a nut and epoxy a nut (or two) in place - you wax the bolt so it doesn't stick to the epoxy. Check out the West System publications, 002-550 might be the one that explains how to do this, GordMay posted a hot link above.

BTW, epoxy doesn't thread that well, it is surprisingly soft. I have a few places on my boat where I have tapped it and it is holding the bolts just fine, but none of those bolts is under any mechanical stress. Your option #2 would be much stronger - epoxy has great compressive strength so you will need to pre-drill a hole for your screw almost as big as the screw - use the bit size recommended for hardwoods.

Personally, I wouldn't trust either of those ways for cheek blocks or fair leads, I suggest embedding a nut, which I don't think is strong enough for your size boat either - depends on the type of conditions you sail in, but if it breaks out while you are sailing it shouldn't be any big disaster unless someone is in the way and gets hit by the hardware - that would really suck.

[roverhi]

If you do a slight counter sink around the screw puka in the deck, you'll probably be okay if you are going through both layers of the deck sheet metal screws. Without routing out and epoxying the puka, you do run the risk of a leak causing a problem but, if it's well caulked with LifeCaulk, you should be okay. I'm assuming that you are talking deck organizers that turn the line way less than 90 degrees so will be lightly loaded. If you are talking turning the line 90 degrees or more, the load on the block is greater than the load on the line by up to twice as much. I'd seriously think about through bolting, if that's what you're installing.

[timbenner]

Thanks for the input. I think I'll through bolt the cheek blocks and sheet metal screw the fairleads into epoxy filled holes.