Repairing winch base mount on wooden spar

[allene]

Originally Posted by svjoss

Hi all,
I have a Cheoy Lee offshore 48 ketch with wooden spars.
A couple of the built up base mounts for winches are showing cracks around the perimeter where they flare up from the mast. I'm looking for a bit of advice on what I should do to repair these.
The spars are spruce box construction with these winch base mounts elevated from the face of the spar.
Any advice would be appreciated
Thanks,
KM

More details would help. Painted or varnish? Checks or splits? Your choice is repair or replace. I have done both at various times. My halyard winches are mounted right to the mast without a base so the issue has not come up there. I don't get overrides but sometimes my crew does. My boat is also painted so when I did repair, it was fill the checking and paint over it. My tendency is to soak everything in West System and fill the cracks with thickened West. The other school of thought is that this filling will cause more cracks to form as the wood changes size with the weather and the filling acts like a wedge. My thought is that once the surrounding area is soaked with west, nothing changes size any more.

Allen Edwards
Lapworth-36 #5
Papoose
http://L-36.com