This plate is 3/8" thick aluminum. It would seem like something similar could be done in SS I'm just not sure if 1/8" would be the right thickness for the bevel to work out correctly. Time to call in the engineers. Also the aluminum would have been fine if there had been some Duralac or Lancote used on them and no steady source of water pouring through the bolts. I plan to reuse these plates, the corrosion on the one plate while substantial is not enough to structurally impact it and it is on the inside surface.
The deck in this area seemed fine until I pulled the clutch off. The seriously damaged balsa was all directly below the clutch. The wet balsa also didn't extend very far out from the clutch. The area under the secondary winch was wet, but not rotted. While I had the high density core to use, I think some epoxy coated plywood would have worked pretty well in this area as well. Plywood could handle the compressive loads and the shear loads much better than the balsa. It is important to also realize that these clutches and the loading they apply is dynamic and not static, so the entire thing is wanting to work around some, again making the sealant work to or beyond its limits.
I also think I will take one more step before I put this all back together. I am going to cut a piece of oak the width of the clutch, bevel an edge on it and place it as a stop block in front of the clutch and glass it in. The idea being to provide something for the clutch to bear against beside just the surface area of the bolts going through the glass. What I don't want happening in the future is the shear forces making the sealant around the bolts to fail around these through bolts. This is probably major overkill, but I hate leaks.
