Gerry, Turnbuckle threads have to be kept lubricated. The best material for this is tallow. You can make a small amount of tallow (a little lasts you a long time) by getting some beef fat; put it in a _*dry pot - *_and heat it very slowly. Make very sure that your pot is absolutely dry - not a drop of water there, before you put the beef fat in the pot. If you have the tiniest trace of water, the liquid tallow will be on top; the water underneath. As the tallow gets hotter; the water drop turns to steam, the pressure builds up and you will suddenly have a small explosion as the steam pressure increases to the point where it can get through the liquid tallow, and escapes. You don't want to get spattered with hot tallow! When the beef fat is totally melted, remove any solids, by straining it through some cheesecloth. Cool your product and put it in a small container. It's a great lubricant for turnbuckles, for oar leathers, and rowlocks. It makes rowing easier, preserves the leather; and there are no more squeaks as you row. Ciao, Connie On 4/2/2019 12:32 PM, Gerry Lempicki via montgomery_boats wrote:
I'm turning into the man of 1000 questions. So I went to Defender Marine last Thursday for their sale. I ordered a couple of replacement buckles with toggle nuts to replace the backstay and headstay ones, as they don't turn well any more, and one had a bend. I received them yesterday, and I got T bolts instead of toggle nuts. Ok, so I called Johnson today to verify that they're as strong as what I had with toggle nuts. No problem there, but in conversation it came up that my standing rigging is 1/8 wire with thimbles and 2 swaged ovals on each end of each cable. Was this standard? Johnson suggested getting rid of it and in fact suggested switching it all over to machine swaged ends because mine are not suitable for standing rigging. What is the consensus here?
-Gerry