by David N. Goodchild

When I was putting down the plywood sub-deck on TOAD HALL, I was concerned about getting a close fit around the mooring bits. These are very firmly installed and I don't expect them to move, but they do pierce the deck and I wanted to be sure that there would be no water ingress into the water-tight compartments below; the two lazarettes in the after deck and the chain locker and cargo hold forward.

I was only able to get a very loose and approximate fit when I installed the deck, but I wasn't too troubled. I knew how I was going to tighten it up. I was also not concerned about the laid deck since this would be on top of the sub- deck and was designed to have a gap around the bitts which would be caulked. It was the sub deck that had to be tight to the bitts.

Complicating the situation a bit (no pun intended) was that I wanted to be able to remove the bitts at some future date should they become damaged or for any other reason. I also wanted them to be removable while I put down the laid deck for ease of working. For these reasons I was not about to epoxy them to the sub-deck which would much be too permanent.

Here's how I solved the problem.

When the sub-deck was completed to my liking I turned my attention to the bitts. I removed them and coated them liberally with vaseline. Then i re- installed them, bolting them firmly in place. After this was done, I mixed up a batch of epoxy, well-thickened with Cab-O-Sil. I forced this into the gaps between the bitts themselves and the sub-deck. Before it hardened, I smoothed it out carefully so that it would not require a lot of grinding. (I didn't want to gouge the bitts with a careless grinding disc).

When everything was cured, I unbolted the bitts and just slid them right out of the, now very close-fitting, apertures. It all worked perfectly and after the laid deck was put down I was able to re-install them in a more permanent fashion.

This technique can be very useful if you need close tolerances but are, like me, not able to always achieve them.