cheek blocks: bearings or no bearings

[kentobin]

Rafiki 37: 37 foot cutter, full keel, 13 ton. Similar to Tayana.

As a neophyte on a refit I need to replace 13 cheek blocks used to lead halyards and lines on the cabin to the cockpit. Most of the existing hardware was frozen.

So I went searching on the web and read everything I could find on cheek blocks used as organizers. All the information I kept finding talked about low friction and ball bearings so I purchased aluminum cheek blocks with delrin ball bearing sheaves.

Recently I was doing some more research on blocks and loads and found a blog that stated for static loading on blocks, like halyards, I shouldn't be using a ball bearing sheave because the ball bearings would deform under the constant static load, at least delrin ball bearings will.

Don't remember covering this topic in the Brion's rigging class but that was a year ago and if it's in the The Rigger's Apprentice I didn't even think to look. Sorry Brion. :-)

So anyone with enough knowledge and experience to point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance.

Ken