Saturday, March 31, 2012

Free Foot Braces


CLC sells some really nice adjustable footbraces, and I'm sure they're worth every bit of the $45 bucks they cost, but I'm a cheap bastard, so I decided to make my own foot braces. At first, I was just going to make some non-adjustable blocks and screw them to the hulls like the plans suggest, but I thought that adjustable ones would be nice to have, if for no other reason than very few of my friends are the same height I am. So I searched the tubes and found some pics of some braces another guy invented that looked straightforward enough to make. I cut them out of some oak that used to be a pallet. If you look closely, you'll see that there are stainless bolts sticking out of the bases, about 5 inches fore and aft of the deckbeam. These will serve as pins for the slotted braces, which will slide forward or back, and be held in place by nylon spacers, washers, and wingnuts. So now, that old pallet is no longer cluttering up the place, and I have $45 bucks in my pocket. I think I'll take my family to the movies.



First, I installed some glass tape to stiffen the hull beneath the base of the footbraces (shown here tacked into place with spray adhesive, but not wetted out yet). Then I installed the bases with epoxy. This has an added advantage of not requiring any through-hull fasteners to hold them in place. The last picture at right is of the braces themselves. Note the slots. I'll add more pictures when they're installed on the bases.

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