Cranse Iron "Mushrooming"

[scsullivan]

I'm refurbishing the bowsprit on my 1985 Baba 40 and noticed that the SS cranse (sp?) iron is very slightly mushroomed near the clevis pin hole where the jib stay is attached. It is raised or bulged-out by approximately 0.01" on each side at the bearing point of the pin. I noticed a similar "bulge" on the gammon iron as well at the staysail attachment point. Other than this, the condition of the both the cranse iron and the gammon iron is very good and no cracks or anomalies can be seen when examined under 8X magnification. My question... do I need to do anything to this as in, is this anything to worry about?

Thanks

[Brian Duff]

Is the hole 'ovaled' or stretched toward the load? Probably not.

What happens here is that many boats are built with the lug on sail carring stays in the wrong orientation. The main deflection from load on a sail stay is sideways, so that the pin for sail carring stays should align fore'n'aft and allow the major toggling to take place at the chainplate pin hole. On your boat, and many others too, the pin in the chainplate/lug on fitting is athwartships and what ends up happening, as you are seeing, is a slight 'mushrooming' of the upper and outer edge of the pinhole on both sides.

So you are probably fine to ignore the problem. unless you are going to start to worry about how this fatigue may have affect the weld attaching the forestay lug to the cranze iron....which would be getting the same deflection as the pin...