As you might have noticed, I have become a bit fixated lately on how bolted joints work. And now I understand more about the subject (thanks Eric and Matt) I see poorly put-together ones everywhere I look.
This would be bad enough if it was limited to stupid stuff I have done in my 60 years of fixing boats, or even dumb stuff I see in boatyards, but, sadly, that’s not the case.
I would bet that a significant number of the gear failures, and a huge percentage of the leaks on boats are because the builder completed a bolted joint poorly. And that sucks when we consider that it’s bolted joints that hold fin keels on, and most every fitting on the deck and many on the rig.
While I would guess the most common bolted joint sin among yachties, yards, and builders is not using a properly calibrated torque wrench every time a bolted joint is put together, as well as checking the torque at least a couple of times afterward to take up creep, there’s another error that I have found in a couple of places on our J/109 that I suspect is all too common:
