Wooden toe rails

[Andrew]

This is my design for a 2 part glued wooden toerail/rub rail. from 90 x 19mm section hardwood decking board.
(It's appearance would be far better than the composite alum/wood one, with no sharp fastenings or anything protruding)

(the lower diagram shows the original wooden toerail design. from a 50 x 25 mm (2"x1"pine section)

[Peter T]

Hi Andrew, Looks fantastic, photos please when its done
Cheers,
Peter T

[Andrew]

Yes there seems to be a bit of a mystery around the I563 toe-rails. My boat is one of the early ones, perhaps the builders learnt as they went along and re-designed improved parts. or the deteriorating originals were replaced by owners - and there is much ingenuity and hence variety in toe rails seen today.

The through bolted hardwood seems to be the strongest wooden toerail type. It could add stiffness to the hull, and if lock nuts are under the gunwale flange, they can be tightened as the wood drys out and shrinks, maintaining overall strength.

[Peter T]

I reckon you need the wooden ones with a teal finish to make it look good and my style aluminium ones to stop your foot from slipping over the side.

Peter T

[Andrew]

No thanks, pass on that one. I can't weld aluminium, and although the staunchion ubolted idea is a good one, dont want to move staunchion bases.

If aluminium was cheap and readily available in the section that fits a TS that could be the way, couldnt see any small TS extrusions, theyre mostly for big boats and budgets. But these must be the strongest, most long lasting and low maintence type of rail. Not good at picking stuff like that up on gumtree yet (and powerboats rule the roost up here, so they tend to flood the search..)

[Peter T]

You are absolutely correct David. It’s just a piece of flat bar aluminium about 50 mm or so wide x around 4 or 5 mm thick that U bolts to the outside of the existing stanchions just above the base plate. That boat had very narrow side decks as I maximised the width of the cabin for comfort within. The deck was just wide enough to walk down and I didn’t want to slip overboard. This leaves a nice gap between the bottom of the rail and the deck or the timber toe rail if that’s what you do. But I made nylon insulators between the pieces as well as sleeves for the Xu bolts to prevent corrosion between the stainless and aluminium. Worked a real treat. Best thing I put on that yacht. The whole thing sat at least half or 3/4 or even more of the shoe height and you had no way of slipping a foot over the side. See my other post for photos. I doubt on our 563’s that you would have to lengthen a 6 m length of aluminium to fit the boat, so no welding I would guess, but I could run a tape over mine to see. It only would need to go from the rear post of the pulpit to the front rail on the pushpit. I reckon I will do the same to the 563.
Regards Peter