May 2, 2020. John Gish sent in a detailed report with lots of photos on replacing his centerboard winch . We kept a 'before and after' photo for this page and put most of those photos in our Technical Section/Centerboards (click here to go to Savili's page)

Webmaster Note: Kim is Kim Granberry whose dad Carlton once owned Savili. Click on the photos for larger images.

Hi Ron and Kim,

Savili's still hiding in my shop with progress made as able between the paying projects. I pulled the centerboard winch in the process of getting it out of the way of the engine removal and did a quick rebuild.

Details for the technical section;This winch was made of Tufnol, I had a few blocks made from this material on another boat but didn’t know much about it until some rainy day research

Tufnol, Engineering plastics and composites | Plastic machining | Fabrics laminates | Machining components
Information about tufnol laminated plastics for engineering applications.

Made by Tuph Fittings of England, the laminate branded as Tuphnol was a phenolic plastic reinforced with linen cloth. Tufnol (from the two words, “tough phenol”) was invented by a team employed by George Ellison in the 1920s. Originally called ‘synthetic resin bonded paper’ or SRBP, it was created from layers of high quality kraft paper bonded together under high pressure with phenol formaldehyde resin. It was hard, strong and easily machined.

I found an ad in Boating magazine from 1959 under "Tuphblox-Tuphfittings" using Google...and then wasted much time reading about the newest boating gear for 1959… It cleaned up pretty well in the end, but the usual tricks for fiberglass did not work, (ie, acetone or mineral spiri ts) but polish helped a lot.The winch was held to the bridgedeck by bronze screws which had been leaking. It was falling apart as I removed it, The tufnol cheeks were screwed to the center with #10 x 1.25” bronze screws. The center section was 4 pieces of teak nailed together and then screwed to the mounting plate with bronze #12 1.5” screws. The nails had rusted away, and the mounting plate was plywood and warped and rotting as well. The bronze screws all came out clean, but I replaced with new stainless of the same size.I hit all the parts with a sander, pulled the bits of nail out and epoxied it all back together. The new mounting plate is now oak screwed to the block, and the whole thing given a coat of epoxy to keep the water off. I haven’t replaced the rope as I’ll wait until I get some use to make sure of the best length, the cable still looked pretty good though. Cheers John

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