Gordon ,, your idea, and getting the cutting board at Wally ,, is great.
I'm wondering why no one else has done this?

Is there give to the cutting board material? Casey advised Marine Ply
because it is a very dense plywood material.

Then again .. so it cutting board.

You may have hit the big one.

I am going to cross post this to my yahoo group. See if anyone there has
used your idea.

Thanks,

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"Gordon" wrote in message
...
NE Sailboat wrote:
Shaun,,, I went out into the kitchen and measured a couple of cutting
boards. They were like 1/2" thick! Next visit to Wally Mart I will
bring my ruler. Who knows, maybe find a cutting board around 1/4" think.
That might work.

I looked in a few different DIY books and the mostly often recommendation
is Marine Ply . Measure the Ply, cut , Casey calls for a beveled edge to
the ply.

Then, before putting up under .. epoxy the ply to seal all the edges,
and bolt holes.

One other book showed a thin piece of stainless steel under the stanchion
base. Helps to spread out the forces of load. The base piece of
stainless is sealed with polysulfide ( 4200?? ), then the stanchion base
is sealed as it is put down on the base piece of stainless.

Under ,, marine ply.

I should think this would give a very strong stanchion base.


One other question ;; what thicknesses does stainless steel come in?

I've never bought any.

-----------------------
"Shaun Van Poecke" wrote in message
...
Planning for spring. I will rebed my stanchion bases. Under the deck,
the backing is a thin piece of fiberglass. I would like to give the
bases a bit more support. I came across the material Starboard.
For myself, I would have gone with marine ply, but the idea of using a
plastic cutting board is simple, cheap and brilliant. I can definitely
see myself using it in future!

If you decide to go with stainless, get it cut for you (try to find a
shop with a guillotine, thats the quickest way to cut it and they
probably wont charge). You'll need a good supply of quality drill bits;
think cobalt, not the $20 for 100 bits kit.

If you go with aluminum, it neednt be one of the 5000 grade
varieties.... while this is what we use at work for building boats, i
wouldnt class the underside of a deck as being a marine environment.
You could get away with pretty much any old garden variety of aluminum
here. You can cut it with any tool that you would use for wood working
that has a carbide tip blade (sawzall, circular saw, table saw etc) it
even hacksaws pretty easy. drilling is a breeze.

regardless of what you choose, re-bed the stanchion above deck with a
quality bedding compound (3M is pretty good) not with liquid nails,
epoxy or whatever else you have in your tool box. *Do not* use bedding
compound under the deck! If you have water getting through from the top
of the deck, you want to know about it. If you seal the bottom as well,
the water has nowhere to travel except internally along your fibreglass
or ply deck. by the time you find out about it you will be in big
trouble. For the same reason, I would not fibreglass the underside of
the deck.

Shaun




My supply of plastic cutting board is 1/4 thick and came from
Wallyworld. I just madeup 2 more stantion backings yesterday. Laid out on
the plastic with marking pen, cut using radial arm saw, rasp to file edges
and corners, drill press for holes and presto! Will take longer to install
than to make.
G