Oh My - what a drama - new swaging failure
 

We have been taking our new wire and fittings, cut and ready to swage to a rigger to get them swaged. It has been a challengine time to do it one or two wires at a time while the mast was up on the boat, on the mooring, but we got there. Then the rigger drops a bombshell. The swaging press has not been compressing enough and he had a recent fitting fail in service (not ours) and told us not to use our rig until he gets back to us. He is having some destructive testing done to assess structual integrity.

We took the initiative and got on to the manufacturer of the swaged products who replied to our email promptly. They gave us the sizes for the swaged fittings after swaging. I checked our against this. The specification for 5/16" wire is a swaged diameter of 14.30mm (tolerance +0.00 & -0.20), our fittings measure 14.75, 14.90, 14.85, 14.65, 14, 95, etc etc.

All fittings were double pass swaged and if they are swaged again that makes them 3 passes. The engineer at the manufacturer said that 3 passes was not ideal and sometimes because the metal has been compressed twice then it may not want to move (flow) much a third time and may tend to spring back.

If anyone can give us some experienced advice on this it would be much appreciated. We kinda feel that our new rig already has integrity issues and don't know where to go from here. http://briontoss.com/spartalk/images...s/confused.gif

Ouch
 

Hello,
We are all very sorry to hear that your swages aren't, so to speak, up to spec. And glad to hear that the rigger is being proactive about it -- the world benefits when we take responsibility for things. Assuming that your measurements are correct, there's really no realistic choice but to start anew. Your rigger might, understandably, prefer to have you get a third pass; this is not a good idea. At best you might be able to cut the longest wires down to make shorter ones, and then make new longer ones.
It is very difficult to keep this type of machine in spec at the best of times, and my experience is that they are always more fatigue-vulnerable than other terminals, so I hope you will consider rotary swages, or compression fittings instead.
I understand that you have a lot of labor into this. Remember, please, that what you have done thus far has no bearing on how to proceed from here.
Fair leads,
Brion Toss

Thank you for your wise words, you are spot on, especially with your last statement !

As the rigger was swaging only and we bought and provided the rest of the gear we are a bit uncertain as to what will happen.

I do not know of anyone who rotary swages in Sydney ?

Swageless - well in hindsight some foresight would have been wonderful.

Call one of these people:
 

Don't know who did the original work but the gentlemen below are both excellent riggers with very good reputations. I'm sure that one of them can advise you and assist in getting things done properly. They'll know who does rotary swages around Sydney. If for some reason they can't help there are a couple more riggers around Pittwater who I know to do good, reliable work.

Good luck
RoyB; Hobart

Bruce Clark - Yacht Rigger
Sydney Rigging Specialists
5 Wellington St Rozelle 2039
(02) 9555 4277 0414 667 773

Joe Henderson - Yacht Rigger
42 Edwin Street Mortlake 2137
(02) 9736 3626 0419 848 348

(Joe checks in here from time to time, he may see your message)

What would you do ?
 

Given that the rigger did the swaging, we supplied all the hardware and labour, it would be interesting to hear how other riggers would handle a similar situation if the swaging they did was not to spec after 2pass swaging ? What would you be prepared to provide to remedy the situation, hardware, wire ? I know you can not speak for another rigger, but what you would do at least gives us some idea as to what is fair to ask for.

Thanks Roy for the reccomended riggers. We needed a special swage end for the furler and rang around Sydney to find that SRS had one in stock, Bruce swaged it on the wire and did a beautiful job and that is part of our comparison to assess the other swages against.

if the swages don't spec, there are three possiblities. The wire is large, the fittings are thick, or (most likely) the machine is wore out. most rig shops i have been at NEVER have calibrated or even check their swages. thats why i use products from Brooks rotary swager (sailing services)

we find MANY rig sets from local shops to be incorrectly made, and what a dissapointment for the owners, who hire us to inspect a recently done job, to find that disaster. Not to mention the political mess that makes for me being the 'bad guy' (in the eyes of local peers)

oy

lesson learned - go to your boat and check your swages!

The rigger has said that it is believed that the swaging press has a stretched bearing housing in the base and so the dye/s move laterally when the pressure is on. Might also explaing why we got a few bananas inthe batch of fittings done there.

The wire and fittings all fitted snugly when we put them togeather before swaging (firm push on fit).

He is keen to do the 3rd pass on the press when it is repaired :confused:.

Even worse
 

Hi again,
Bananas? If that rigger let those out of the shop, it seems like one more reason to suspect overall quality. And by the way, a third pass, in addition to hardening the wire, will likely make it lopsided, which calls for a fourth pass...
The machine was definitely way out of whack, which means that the swager kept swaging until it was so loose that wires started failing. This does not speak volumes in terms of quality control. There is not usually a big margin in rigging, and I offer this advice with sympathy, but I believe that the honorable thing for the rigger to do is either give you a new gang with the reconditioned machine, or give you a full refund, so you can seek out a better gang.
Fair leads,
Brion Toss

Update - The mud is getting stickier !
 

Not much progress has been made with the rigger. There is a very strong concensus out there that a 3rd pass is not a good idea, especially seen the rig is back on the vessel and a 3rd pass would be done cold, weeks after the first double pass. But, getting the manufacturer or the importer to state that in writing is proving a tough task. Putting words into writing is the support we would expect from them for a product that is engineered for load bearing applications. What we really need is for some hard copy of information that supports the idea that overworking the swage by multi passing it, is not a safe practice. With that we have a better chance of getting through the impasse that seems to exist at the moment.

Even if the riggers swaging machine gets repaired and another pass is attempted, will it come to spec on the third pass or is a fouth or more going to happen.

Thanks again for the feedback. Much appreciated.

In my humble opinion
 

You should be able to go to sea with your new rigging without having any nagging doubts about whether the swages are going to crack or fail every time the breeze gets over 20 knots.

It seems to me that at this point the only way you can gain the confidence in your new rigging that you should have is to start over with another known-reliable rigger doing the swages properly.

I dunno about you mate but if it were me and I had the third pass done and had a few banana swages or anything that were less than perfect in the rigging I'd never achieve the peace and serenity that you ought to be able to. I'd be up on deck every 15 minutes with a magnifying glass and torch and I'd be thinking about die penetrant tests, etc. It's not worth it. Get it done right and then don't think about it any more. Get the rigger to compensate you for the wasted wire and fittings and his labor charge and start over. Talk to him and clearly express what you believe a fair settlement would be. Go to court if you have to. Don't worry about your wasted time, just get the job done right then do the installation again, it will be easier the second time :-)

I know you didn't ask for my advice and I apologise if you don't want it.

In my opinion one of the indispensable elements of safety at sea is having confidence in your boat. I try to ensure that my boat is always more seaworthy than I am. Anything that leads to less than full confidence should be fixed or changed. The potential consequences of structural failure are too serious to allow half-baked solutions.

Go for it Asylum - your opinion is most welcome. If we did not want to hear the hard truth then we would not be here on Spartalk. There is no way we will be happy with a 3rd pass swaging for the sort of sailing we intend to do (Oz - Chile and return across the Tropics). I would have trusted the old rig more than this one, as it did not have cracks in anything after 15 years plus (pressed swages).

Just got to get the rigger to see the light. We have a "Fair Trading" dispute system here where the first step is mediation, then a Fair Trading tribunal if mediation does not work, just need the evidence to support my statements. I would hope that before going into that system, with some evidence the rigger will realise that we are very determined to pursue this to a balanced outcome. We want to be fair as well and have offered to do as much of the labour as we can (apart from swaging) as he will no doubt have a big workload, with the swaging machine having compromised not only our rig but unknown others as well.


You hit the nail on the head in your summary !

When you get to Oz...
 

Make sure you allow some time (plenty of time) to come south to Tasmania. Hobart and it's surrounds are a great cruising area - Southern summer is best as we're quit a way south.

If you do get to Hobart look me up - I'll send you my email address in a PM.

As we are more like cold water cod than tropical fish, Tassie is very high on the hit list !

Email sent.

now resolved !!!
 

The drama is now at an end. The rigger did the honorable thing and replaced the wire and hardware, refunded us the money we paid for swaging and off we went to get the new gear swaged elsewhere on a better swaging machine. This time we had them done in a overhead press by Joe Walsh, and he did a great job, all to spec and was friendly to deal with. In hindsight we wish we had done the extra driving 6 weeks ago.

Now I have to put the new stays on the mast (the old ones are currently back on to keep things upright).

Thanks for all the support and comments, they helped us pursue a safe outcome in this case. The importers appear to have also influenced the outcome in ensuring that their product was swaged on in an acceptable manner, it is not in their interest to have their name on components that may fail. The exact question that we asked to get their attention was: "Can the manufacturer of XYZ swaged fittings state, that swaging XYZ terminals by the process proposed by the rigger (detailed below) constitutes correct procedure for the manufacturing of sailboat rigging and that there is no compromise to the structural integrity of the rig as a result of such swaged joints that will affect the safe use of, service life of, or functioning of the rig".

The lessons we have learnt from this episode are:

1/ Have fittings "press" swaged in a big machine, rotary swaging may be possible in the USA, but nobody I asked knew of them being used here in Sydney. If roller swaging is done then make sure the machine is capable of achieving correct compression on the medium and heavy wires. If you are in Oz then be wary of the roller swage machines that originate in Perth. We had problems with swages done on 2 different versions of that roller swage machines in the hands of 2 different riggers. The opinion of some riggers here is that those RS machines are for smaller diameter swaging, but not the larger stuff (we had 5/16").

2/ Have the first swage checked in your presence to make sure it is to specification, don't assume anything, take some verniers and that will also show the rigger that you are checking on the quality of the work to be done. In the end it is your safety on the line.