Mast & boom winches

I’m slowly gathering hardware for planned new, wooden mast for Meritaten. Talked recently with Patrick and Hellen about wooden mast constructor who lives not very far from us. I need to talk to him about the whole project.

I found these two small winches on Blocket, for no money. They are old, dinghy winches so nothing to use as cockpit equipment on Meritaten but as reefing or halyard winches they should work fine. I already have simlar one on the mast, for main sail halyard.

I bough them because they are made of Tufnol - wonder material from 50’ & 60’ when Meritaten was built.
I still use original blocks and genua carts made of Tufnol. They show no signs of age.

These two winches were dirty and smelled old cellar. Probably were kept in some box for half century. Few strokes of sanding paper and Tufnol on one winch got its brown colour again. Looks as new.

The only thing to fix are new springs - these in the winches are dead. I’ll see to it in coming days.

View fullsize