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Not to beat a dead horse, but here's a story.

Wife grew up on a boat, and I came to sailing later in life. After 2 years of dinghy sailing lessons and then basic keelboat, we set out to search for our perfect sailboat - a Catalina 30. After three months and dozens of boats, we found nothing that met even our preliminary requirements, my father in law took us aside and asked us this:

"Do you want to spend your time shopping or sailing?"

The point was clear - much like the Pardys "Go small, go simple, go now." We ended up buying a Catalina 28MkI that was seaworthy, but met maybe half of our earlier "requirements". The difference was that we would be on the water in August, with plenty of a season left. We probably put 20k into that boat over the 6 years we owned her and sold her for $18k last year. (Again, did we want to wait for the most amount of money we could get, or did we want to buy a 34?) If we were a bit more selective about the first boat we bought, there were pitfalls that we could have avoided. But then, it would have taken longer to find the right boat. In the end, we had a lot of fun on the 28 and made her a much better boat than when we found her. I wouldn't trade those experiences for any amount of time or money.

I'm not trying to put down your list - these are things that you absolutely need to know about your boat. Clearly you need a boat that is seaworthy. But with a list of requirements this stringent, you're going to shopping for a while. Do you want to shop for boats or sail them?

So as a follow up, I would probably put threaded rod the next time I have to do this. I also realized, once I got most of the handrail on, that the crossthreading happened because the hand rail isn't quite bent into position to fit the holes accurately. When I got to that last hole that was crossthreaded, I put the screw in and started tightening and realized that it was crossthreaded. Looking at it topside, the handrail was slightly off azis from the hole. Getting a helper got the handrail in position and the screw in correctly.

The other thing that the threaded rod gives you is the ability to do this without an assistant. Something I desperately needed. The person who helped me asked "How were you going to get this done without me? There's no way that would have worked without help!" I don't disagree.

Thanks for all your help!

Less Leaky,
Mark

Whenever I redo something, I use new screws and bolts.  I keep the old ones and label where they came from.  I still have a ton of stanchion bolts. 

I'm still trying to figure out what "handrail" bolts you're dealing with as "...the port side stainless hand rail..."  If it's not the pushpit, what is the bolt being tapped into?  My handrails, the old wooden ones, have bolts, nuts and acorn nuts below.  I'm still trying to figure out what you're doing.  I'm rather dense.

Stu - that's for this - my next project is to pull all the stanchions and even after going through this I didn't think about ordering new. I guess I need to make the mistake twice before it sinks in. Since I only budgeted an hour for doing the grab rail (and 4 for the stanchions), if the same ratio holds then it should take a better part of a week to do the stanchions?

Mark

I believe he has stainless steel grab rails on the outside coachroof which replaced the wooden ones that we have in our MKIs. If this is the case, I assume the rails are tapped to take a bolt up from below. I may be totally off base here. If my theory is true I would suggest retapping/chasing/clearing the threads in the base of the handrails, then use threaded rod into the handrails. Once the threaded (studs) are into the handrails—redrill new larger holes in the cabin top that line-up, then fill those with epoxy and redrill, then use butyl tape, nuts and cap-nuts below to secure. If I have your problem/goal all wrong, please disregard!

DING DING! We have a winner!

I have a MkII, which doesn't have the wooden grab rails. Why use threaded rod when I could get another machine screw and not have to deal with nuts and cap nuts? The hole in the cabintop is already way oversize.

How's it going? We bought ours last year and there weren't many on the market.

Could it be a fine vs coarse thread issue?

The threads measured to 18tpi and the 18tpi measurement tool that came with the tap and die set fit into the threads exactly.

Okay, there's at least one coda to the whole story.

Remember how I said that I retapped all the holes to practice? Well, there was a bit of swarf that came from each of them and each one wasn't exactly perfect. Well, once I tried to put the machine screws back into the threads, none of them fit anymore. I know that I used the right tap because the set came with a measuring tool.

Here's what I think happened: As near as I can tell, each of the screws are slightly bent. So I'm guessing that each of the holes were also slightly bent, too? Re-tapping them might have straightened out the holes and not the bent screws don't go in. I can also tell that this had leaked before (corrosion and over-torqueing marks on the screwhead) and I'm wondering if one of the POs knew something was amiss and put it all back - rather than trying to fix it.

The other thing it could be is that my tap and die set from the orange store could be slightly off? I tried re-tapping (re-dying?) the screws and it was taking off a lot of material. I thought that maybe they were metric screws for a minute, but none of the metric sizes were even close to the 5/16" 18tpi. I don't know - maybe there's a metric size that wasn't in the kit that's close.

Anyway, I won't know any more until I get new screws tomorrow.

No matter how long I own a boat, I'm going to keep underestimating how long it takes to do something. Who would have thought I'd have 10 hours into rebedding ONE handrail?

Mark

You could try to re tap the hole the same size. That may clean up the old threads so they hold. Don't over tighten, the threads may be a little thin. If you aren't sure of the thread size, take the bolt to the hardware and they will help you with the right size tap. 
If that doesn't work you can drill and tap for the next size thread. I have seen individual taps packaged with the proper tap drill and that makes the job much easier.
Don't forget to use plenty of oil. If you haven't used a tap, get it started and back it out 1/2 turn to clean out the shavings. Max one turn forward and back out 1/2 turn. Taps are brittle and a broken tap in a hole is not a pleasant experience. If you can, call a friend to help, he may have a tap and die set.
   Hope all goes well.

Phil,

Thanks for all the advice. I bit the bullet and bought a tap and die set. Spent the morning watching people do this on utube and then tried it myself. It seems to have worked!

For all those that run into this, I bought a tap and die set that covers lots of different sizes. If you just want to buy the one specifically for the handrails, they're 5/16" 18tpi. It was a bit nerve wracking. I re-tapped the holes that were fine first, to get the feel of it. That worked out because there was still plenty of 4200 in the threads and re-tapping them got all of that out.

I'm going to re-bed the handrails with some Bed-it buytl tape so that it can be redone at some point in the future without too much need to clean up the threads.

Mark

Well, it looks like one of the PO's cross threaded one of the bolt holes on the port side stainless hand rail.

Not sure what you are describing.  Are you asking about the lifeline the fittings or the stanchion mounting bolts.  Turnbuckles and their mating fittings are one side right hand threads the other left hand threads. 
Jim

There are threads in the stainless steel handrail that's mounted to the cabin top and these are what are cross threaded.

Well, it looks like one of the PO's cross threaded one of the bolt holes on the port side stainless hand rail. I have no idea how to fix this, other than to take it to a shop and have them redo it. I don't have a tap and die set. If I got one, do I drill it out and make a bigger one, or can the existing threads be "reset"?

Thanks!

Mark : Do you have a C34 or C28?  Not too sure about the C28 interior?

A thought

Oops, forgot to change my signature!

Whoa! It looks like our C34s are 11 hulls apart!

The only screws that I could find were the ones on the trim piece. I'm a bit ham-fisted, I was loath to try and get those trim piece plugs out to expose the screws.

It sounds like you're saying that there are more screws on the inside of the cubby along the perimeter of the top. I tried to get my hand up there, but couldn't. I didn't really try hard, tho. I'll poke around in there and see what I find.

Mark

C34 #1488

Mark
Sounds like your stereo is mounted inside the Cubby storage on either side of the fixed window in the hull.  You can take the whole top of that cubby by unscrewing the screws around the perimeter.  Stick your hand inside and feel around the top perimeter.  You'll touch the screws every so often, countersunk.  I believe if you take off the vertical screws the top should come right off, exposing the whole top of the cubby, giving you access to the stereo.

Thanks Craig, I had no idea!

Often, vehicle stereos come with a pair of thin metal pieces about 1/4" W x 5" L that you slide in to release those tabs to remove the stereo. You might check with an aftermarket car audio store to get a pair if the previous owner didn't leave them in the Nav table.

Craig

Clearly I am failing some sort of intelligence test.

In my C34, the Sony stereo is mounted in a black box on the port side, behind the settee, inside the aftmost cubby. The stereo is mounted to this box...in some fashion. If I take the two screws that are to the left and right, it frees up a wooden plate that the stereo is mounted to. There doesn't seem to be any way to slide that plate out of the cubby. The stereo appears to be attached to that front plate. I've taken off the front plate and all the screws I can find, and I can't seem to separate the stereo from this detachable front plate. I can feel some metal tabs that is keeing the case of the radio attached to the front plate, however there's no way of getting to all of them - there's just not enough clearance to get a tool in there. Nor can I figure out how this all got in here to begin with. My next step was to take a multi-tool to the front plate and cut the thing out.

Before doing that, I figure I would post here.

Thanks for your help...

Mark  #1488

Canvas 3-piece winter cover for C34 mkII.  Not used in several years.
Make me an offer.
Photos available.

I'm interested if you haven't sold it yet.