Wire and rod rigging

We have the tooling in house to enable us to roll swage fittings onto wire diameters from 2mm to 28mm. We also stock all the wire and fittings to enable us to produce any of these sizes from stock. We can also talurit eyes in wire (with or without thimbles) from 1.5mm to 16mm.

We stock 3 different types of wire, depending on its use.

The most commonly used wire for standing rigging on boats, or balustrade systems is 1x19 stainless steel wire, which is, as its name implies, made up of 19 individual strands made up of 1 wire. Consequently it is very stiff.

If the wire is to run around corners, or sheaves, we would normally use 7x19 stainless steel wire, which is made up of 7 wires, each made of 19 smaller wires. As you could imagine, each wire is tiny and consequently the whole wire is fairly flexible. This is used most commonly for wire or wire/rope halyards, keel wires and steering systems.

Dyform wire is the 3rd type of wire we stock and is used when stretch, or weight of rigging is very important. Dyform is a 1x 7 construction, but each wire is pre-formed to fitinto its neighbour strand more closely, thus there are less air gaps in the cross section. It consequently has more material and is significantly stronger than a similar diameter wire. This means we can sometimes reduce the wire diameter for the same strength, which gives the obvious weight and windage savings, or we can retain wire diameter and achieve significantly lower stretch and higher work loadings than the 1x19 wire.

For the ultimate standing rigging products we also use and sell the full BSI and Navtec rod rigging systems, which we assemble in house. We have the only cold heading press west of the Solent, which makes modifications feasible. We can accomodate rods up to -150 (25.4mm)

The BSI / Navtec Terminals, combined with the very best Nitronic Rod, makes for the ultimate, low stretch, low windage standing rigging systems.

One major advantage of Rod rigging is that we can often simply re head the rods at the end of their life span and re use most of the end fittings, which saves a lot of money when re rigging is required.

Whatever your wire requirements, we fit only the best hard ware onto the ends, whether it be roll swage terminals or the Norseman or Stalok swageless terminals. We will always check that the correct make of “T-terminal” is used, to match the backing plates in your mast, as these must never be mis-matched.

We can offer a full range of rigging screws from commercial grade stainless steel rigging screws for balustrade systems through chromed bronze bodied, integral toggled rigging screws for the cruising boats to fully calibrated turnbuckles for the keen race boat owner.

We will always check that what we make is exactly right for your mast and your requirements If you need a replacement set of standing rigging, or just one stay, please contact us for a competitive quote.

Ropes

We stock a full size and colour range of ropes suitable for any boat from dinghies to 80’ yachts. We choose specific ropes from different rope manufacturers for the specific needs of a particular rope on a boat. For instance, we would use a low stretch polyester braid for a cruising main or genoa halyard, but a standard polyester braid on braid for a spinnaker halyard, or boom topping lift.

All our ropes are supplied with specific splices for different jobs, ie: on a race boat, we would supply a spectra spinnaker halyard, with the cover stripped off all areas not handled. This also helps to reduce the windage when the halyard is attached to the deck or guardwire when the boat is sailing to windward. It also helps with the reduction in water absorbtion and subsequent weight increase that the polyester cover attracts.

We have been very fortunate to be involved in some leading edge race boat projects, which has allowed our team of riggers to develop some state of the art splices and rope systems, which in many cases allows us to put a splice in a rope with next to no reduction in the designed strength of the rope.

Due to the volume of rope we buy and stock, we are also very competitive on our finished product.

Please contact us for a detailed quote on your rigging requirements.

We also manufacture webbing products, including Jackstays, liferaft strops, Guard wire back rests and other commercial products.

Full Product range stocked:-