Winches How Modern Design Has Failed Us....

[Stumble]

Originally Posted by Celestialsailor

Please apply this thinking to the air transport industry. If a mechanism on an airliner was adequately designed to work under normal conditions but not abuse, I would not want to ba a passenger on that plane. As long as you have the human condition, you will have mistakes and abuse.

So you never fly then?

If you ever get the chance to inspect an airplane close up there are stickers all over them with warnings like "don't walk here", "do not tow by this landing gear", "walk here only". Many wing luggage holds have VERY specific maximum weights than can be loaded there...

The difference is that to work on, or fly an airplane you have to prove to the FAA that you a) know what those warning mean, and b) know enough to follow them. Planes are built strong enough to handle the loads they are expected to see in the service they will be put through, and that's it. Because every pound of weight added is a pound of fuel or cargo that can't come.

Just take a look at the thickness of an airplanes skin sometime and ask how much abuse it could take. They aren't much thicker than soda cans.


This is true everywhere. Highly engineered structures are engineered to take exacally what they need to in order to function. And the more highly engineered something is, the more likely abuse will quickly lead to destruction.

[Lagoon4us]

Greg facts are the good intent of this thread has been drifted onto a sandbar and it's firmly stuck in the mud. You know better than to try to analogise Celestials comment in the direction that you did.

We all can plainly see Celestial's meaning was that things cop abuse and need to be able to stand up to that abuse.

Anyone who has ever sailed a sailing boat has put sheets on wrong way round a winch, or have released a jammer causing a sheet to wildly snake over a winch and/or has not put sufficient turns on to hold could cause the damage shown.

These are the causes that will bend a flimsy tailer or melt a thin plastic skirt. There is no room on a sailboat whether charter boat or not as they may let you down.

It was my goal to give a heads up about a marketplace item that in MY experience and knowledge is seriously lacking, sadly i see on this forum, quite often, pathetic armchair jibes coming from argumentative non performers who know no better.

This brings down the good side of a forum , instead of healthy discussion the comments drift, the messenger/message is shot. Comes a time where there is no point, the armchairs can face each other and argue with each other i have better things to do. Thread closed as far as any further input from me.
Ciao

[barnakiel]

I believe the average quality is lower than with the old equipment, but I think years ago the equipment was way pricier too!

One can still get quality winches and from more than one maker.

b.

[Celestialsailor]

Being a Machinist has turned out to be a real gift with this lifestyle. I had old non tailing Swedish winches and found some Bariant 27's that had been taken apart too many times and the threads that hold the tailing plate on were striped. The shoulder bolts were unique and I was able to modify some stock ones to replicate them and use SS Helicoils to repair the striped threads. My point is...that I personally would rather buy old stuff that is made by a decent country and rebuild them. I built a 2500 sq ft plantation house in Hawaii. I couldn't bring myself to buy a light fixture built in China because I had done that with another house and seen very shoty standards. And I swear...you cannot find a light fixture in the US built anywhere but China. So on ebay I found pewter chandeliers from an Opera house that was being scraped and rebuilt them. It really added a natural beauty to the home. My point is to each his own. But I think too it might be an age thing. I was born in the 50's and I grew up around quality. That might not be so if you grew up in the late 60's and onwards.
So a winch with a stamped tailer (and I'm sure that's what it is) and a plastic reinforced base...not for me.

[colemj]

Harken should not be blamed for making products to fit several market niches. They also make winches that meet your requirements, as even a cursory glance at their website would have shown you, but Lagoon and others decided not to use them for whatever reason.

That is in no way Harken's fault or an indictment of Harken gear. Not even that particular model of winch.

Even though you are now stating your only purpose in this thread was to warn others considering putting a boat into charter that these winches are not up to snuff in that application, your original post was quite a different beast altogether.

In that post, you stated that Harken used to make quality products but now they use soft stainless instead of cast bronze and intimated that Harken has sadly gone downhill. You made sweeping summary statements about "modern winch designs" and how sad the structure of winches has become without isolating these particular winches in this particular application in any way.

In fact, the entire post was about how bad Harken winches are now and had nothing to say about warning people about putting this particular winch series on a charter boat.

Had you written it in the manner that you are now claiming you did, the post would have been informative and helpful.

It would also not resemble your original post in any way. Not even the title.

Mark

[DeepFrz]

I get the idea that they are racing winches from Harken. These are their radial line, which are aluminium drums, with composite skirts and jaws to save weight. Their advertising copy for this line actually discusses how much weight they save compared to their classic line of winches that replaces the aluminium with all stainless of bronze construction.

They needed cheap and dirty to meet a builder's specs so had to call them something. Of course it wouldn't do to call them "our cheap line". Usually mfg. call these lines "value lines". LOL

So why does a charter boat have these winches? Because they are about half the price of the classics. Roughly $2,200 for a classic 32 vs $970 for the radial 35's.

[downunder]

to colemj and jeremiason

What I read into this thread is that in outfitting a vessel or potentially purchasing a 2nd hand Lagoon is to be aware of winches and that some of the cheap "value" Harken's may have been put to use in the wrong application on some production vessels. Good to be aware of this.

I don't read it as Harken bashing and still consider Harken as the most likely choice if I build a vessel.

Boy you guys are fired up on this one. Mark, I do enjoy your useful authorative posts on many subjects.
Thanks for the info Lagoon4US

[CarinaPDX]

It seems to me that there are a lot more marginal products around these days, and winches are no exception. Back in the 70's there were two sizing methods for winches: one used the maximum load in 100's of pounds and the other was the gear ratio. The load-based one has disappeared and for many winches it is difficult or impossible to determine the maximum load ratings. There has been a lot of good design engineering going on with winches, which has dropped a lot of weight, but robustness has clearly suffered. As an example, the Andersen winches I put on Carina about 15 years ago are light and strong, with the drums made of sheet stainless. Nonetheless, the drums are not nearly as robust as the earlier Enkes cast stainless drums I had bought - but which suffered from corrosion to the aluminum self-tailer and binding from salt deposits (no drain for the bearing race). So the newer winches are better designed but less able to take heavy (over)loads.

I think the point about the Harken stamped stainless arms is not the fact that it is made of stainless steel sheet but that it was made of too thin of a material. The sheet stainless strippers on the Andersens are quite sturdy. Still, they were almost certainly misused - the stripper arm exists to feed the self-tailing mechanism, which is only meant to keep some tension on the line. Too many people try to use the tailing mechanism to pull the line (instead of 4 or more turns on the drum in heavy use). Of course charter boats should be robust enough to survive common mistakes like this.

Greg

[Celestialsailor]

Originally Posted by Lagoon4us

Having done a survey on a Lagoon 40 this week i thought i'd share with the Forum how sad the structure of sheet winches has become.

Harken to me had a great race name, a generally good product however the pictures below show a different story.

The tailing arms are no longer cast , chromed bronze instead they now appear to be soft pressed Stainless Steel.

Likewise the bases are thermo-plastic not aluminium/bronze or stainless.

They just don't cut it!!!!!

Originally Posted by colemj

Harken should not be blamed for making products to fit several market niches. They also make winches that meet your requirements, as even a cursory glance at their website would have shown you, but Lagoon and others decided not to use them for whatever reason.

That is in no way Harken's fault or an indictment of Harken gear. Not even that particular model of winch.

Even though you are now stating your only purpose in this thread was to warn others considering putting a boat into charter that these winches are not up to snuff in that application, your original post was quite a different beast altogether.

In that post, you stated that Harken used to make quality products but now they use soft stainless instead of cast bronze and intimated that Harken has sadly gone downhill. You made sweeping summary statements about "modern winch designs" and how sad the structure of winches has become without isolating these particular winches in this particular application in any way.

In fact, the entire post was about how bad Harken winches are now and had nothing to say about warning people about putting this particular winch series on a charter boat.

Had you written it in the manner that you are now claiming you did, the post would have been informative and helpful.

It would also not resemble your original post in any way. Not even the title.

Mark

I'm not seeing in the original OP's quote where he is blaming Harkin, Harkin had gone downhill or how bad Harkin is now. I think the Op just wanted to let the rest of the members to have a heads up when seeing these winches. I found the thread informative.

[hellosailor]

"The Chinese, as with the Japanese before them (when Japanese labour was cheap) make things exactly according to supplied specifications."
I have to side with Celestial on this one. The Chinese have earned a reputation for problems. The Japanese usually met or exceeded specs, the culture takes a very different viewpoint on cheating the hairy barbarians once a contract has been signed. In China? Wait, what was that about Rocna anchors? Or the toxic gluten in pet foods? And the toxic baby formula in China? Or the counterfeit, or was it adulterated, heparin a few years before that? Heck, even the Chinese government makes a display of taking some cheater out back and shooting him--literally--to make a point every year or two. Want mass counterfeits of copyrighted materials? You can buy them openly in China. Can't do that in England, Italy, Switzerland, Bermuda...

Obviously China is capable of producing goods. But as MANY companies who have opened shops there will tell you, you'd better have someone living and sleeping in the plant to supervise what is going on, unless you know the owners very personally.

Meanwhile...if 3 out of 4 parts get broken by "operator error" on any piece of equipment, that's a design failure. Bronze, brass, stainless, doesn't matter. Can't blame the material for the designer's failure to build a product that can take abuse. Anticipating the abuse that a product will take, and ensuring it doesn't cause a problem, is a hallmark of good design. Three out of four break? Yeah, oopsie. Time to hire someone new in the design department.

[Lucky Larry]

I don't know if they are the same size as those depicted but we had what appears to be the same model on our first, and now second Lagoon. Both purchased new and both in charter. While I have seen the marks on the base we have not seen any issues with the tailing arms. I would say that as long as you have a good charter operator, which we do, the warning goes to the charter company since they will be maintaining it.

I an also tell you that on the purchasing of two new Lagoons the winch choice was manual or electric. We're happy with ours and I don't expect them to hold up to boneheaded abuse.


Lucky Larry

[thinwater]

My biggest gripe with winches are deigns that must be removed for overhaul. Given how many either seize to the mast or have mounting bolts that are concealed under a ceiling, this is just poor design-for-maintenance.

[senormechanico]

Originally Posted by Celestialsailor

No matter how the winches were damaged...through stupidity or misuse, you could probably say that if the were cast, that would not have happened. Redundancy is important on a sailboat.

Redundancy is a foreign word to charterers. Price for the charter is everything.

I remember back in the '70's when Ralph Nader demanded all cars be able to hit a concrete barrier at 70 mph and have all the occupants walk away.

Only one problem with that. Each car would have to weigh something like 40,000 lbs or some such and get 8 mpg.

[Stumble]

Hello sailor,

The point I have been trying to make is that these winches were predictable in their failure method if they were abused like this. That is not a design flaw, but operator error.

The real problem here was Lagoon selecting winches that are wholy inappropriate for the application they were going to be put to. Becaus eit was predictable for the boat manufacturer to know the winches were going to be abused. It was not predictable for Harken that they were going to be used in appropriately. Particularly since they make a winch designed to handle the type of abuse these were put through.

Blaming Harken for these failures is roughly the same as installing a tow hitch on a miata, and being upset that your transmission cooks itself while towing a boat. Neither Harken nor Mazda could predict that someone would put their products to a use that was wholy inconsistent with the design spec for the parts.

[Celestialsailor]

Originally Posted by senormechanico

Redundancy is a foreign word to charterers. Price for the charter is everything.

I remember back in the '70's when Ralph Nader demanded all cars be able to hit a concrete barrier at 70 mph and have all the occupants walk away.

Only one problem with that. Each car would have to weigh something like 40,000 lbs or some such and get 8 mpg.

I know it's late and I just came from an all Zombie Halloween party but surely you're not comparing Ralph Naders Idea of walking away from a 70 mph. crash to pressed steel tailers.