Cutting 3/16” forestay

[Cheechako]

It's a fact: Metal saw blades, drills etc leave iron to rust on the surface when used for cutting. It's not even allowed for some aerospace manufacturing.

[boatpoker]

Originally Posted by donradcliffe

How many times have you taken a mechanical wire fitting apart in a survey, and what corrosion have you found in one which has been properly filled with caulk when it was done up?

Here is a crudely drilled hole in ss about 3wks old and already corroding. This was done on the water not in a machine shop with properly lubricated tooling. I see stuff like this all the time.

In my experience this workmanship is much more likely than your level of craftsmanship

[pdx_sailing]

you will not want to adjust the fitting a few times to get the length right. Once tight the cone is very difficult to get back out of the fitting. Depending on where you are a local chandlery may rent you cable cutters for the day, 3/16 wire isn't that large, easliy done by hand.

[MicHughV]

If you wire ends up a bit short, you can always add another toggle to the bottom of the turnbuckle, this will give you another 2" or so to work with. There are a variety of toggles available to suit your particular needs.

The cone inside the stalok fitting tends to get indentations in it from the individual wire strands, so re-using it again is not optimum. Finding and getting a new cone is a simple matter.

[Nekton73]

If you want to eliminate guesswork on the length, stretch out the existing forestay on the ground, turnbuckle fully extended, tension it, and measure the exact length you need. No doubt you can come up with two firm anchor points roughly 25' apart (I'm guesstimating based on your forestay diameter and boat length references) but some easy solutions are: A tree on one end and your vehicle on the other, two screws into a wood substrate such as a deck, any sort of spike, rebar, dog leash anchor etc. into the turf... and so on.

You don't need full rig tension, just enough to straighten the curls and bends that I suspect you are referring to when you describe your stay as "mangled". If you have true kinks then just straighten them as best you can.

Alternately, as has already been mentioned, measure with the rig up and tensioned. You don't have to climb the mast. Just mark a light piece of line with tape and secure it firmly to the upper pin location. Some e-tape or good old Red Green tape will be fine. Raise rig and tension. Pull light line taught and mark your lower pin distance. Lower rig and measure between the marks on the line at your leisure. Or do the same as above using a field tape.



As for cutting and reusing cones: for a stay diameter that small I'd just use a hacksaw with a good blade, it would just take a moment. You can use a grinder but, as already mentioned, go slow, not so much for the corrosion issue (I don't have the knowledge to confirm or refute what has been said) but because if you melt any of the strands and leave a bit of a slag end you'll have a devil of a time installing the cone and tightening the fitting without having to file off or clean up the strands.

The cone on a sta-lock is hard to reuse because once tightened it compresses slightly around the core and is hard to impossible to slide off without damaging it. Go ahead and try, but likely you will find it is not effort well spent. You can order a package of replacement cones from various online suppliers for not much $ and have spares for mistakes or any future replacements. As already mentioned, other manufacturers have fully reusable fittings so maybe you want to consider those instead.

[SY Harmony]

Originally Posted by boatpoker

My experience being Certified in Marine Corrosion and thousands of surveys
makes leads me to disagree.

Accepting the fact corrosion is found on the ends of the wire.
I have to ask, why do we care? The end of the wire is outboard of the compression point of the fitting.

[Brioche]

I have a block of hard wood (maple, but teak would do as well) and when cutting SS cable I drill a hold the size of the cable, insert the cable, and then cut through with a hacksaw. The wood sleeve keeps the individual wires from moving and gives a good tidy end.

[The Yacht Rigger]

I like to use either felco cutters (Expensive) or a battery bandsaw, also expensive.
When I first got started doing mobile rigging I used a hacksaw. A grinder will work, but lower heat cutting methods are preferred.
Remember to fill the final finished sta-lok with sikaflex or similar.

[massnspace]

Thanks much for all the advice….

Whoever installed the previous forestay did not add the final 6” plastic “joiner” piece at the very top….not to join but to act as a bushing. The result was the rotating of the foil ground at the wire, fraying it. I then made then mistake of trying to pull out the frayed wire as it bound up inside the foils….it bound so badly that I had to disassemble some of the foils and cut the stay into sections to get it out….

I think the best idea is to set up the mast and use a rolling hitch to tension the overly-long stay to measure it. Then I’ll either grinder it or buy a simple bi-metal hacksaw blade and use the wooden block method to stabilize it for the cut. Should be close enough given I have a turnbuckle. And I did not think about simply adding a toggle in the case if it being too short. That’s easy and simple if I need to do it.

Thanks again to the community….

[JBP]

Good luck.
Have fun.
Even if you do cut it way too short, it's just $40 of wire for a lesson learned.

[Jim Cate]

Whoever installed the previous forestay did not add the final 6” plastic “joiner” piece at the very top….not to join but to act as a bushing. The result was the rotating of the foil ground at the wire, fraying it. I then made then mistake of trying to pull out the frayed wire as it bound up inside the foils….it bound so badly that I had to disassemble some of the foils and cut the stay into sections to get it out….

FWIW: Your description of the wire sounds more like what happens with a halyard wrap than "fraying", and really, the soft aluminium of t he foil won't likely cause wear or "fraying" of t he much harder stainless wire. I had a similar situation with a missing top bearing sleeve and wore a bug groove in the foil with no damage to the wire. At any rate, sounds like you are well on your way to a new forestay.

And BTW, you can do a partial assembly of the StaLok for measurement purposes by simply assembling it but not doing the final tightening step. The length does not change appreciably in that step, and if not tightened the cone isn't compressed and can be reused safely.

Good luck, and good onya for the DIY.

Jim