J/30 Class Association Forums J/30 Forum The Boat, Sails and Equipment Handrails

My Cabin top handrails are shot and need to be replaced. Do I need to replace with teak or can I use something else - I'd prefer to go with stainless for ease of maintenance. Also, it appears that the 5 loop handrails on the boat are not a standard size, has anyone else replaced their hand rails, and if so what did they use/cost ?

on 505 and 526 used two- two foot stainless steel handrails from WM on each side. On both original decks one or two of the through bolts from the top rail to the inside handgrab broke ... I didn't want to repeat that engineering fault. (an alternative is probably just to use a one size larger bolt) Or not have heavy crew do things on the deck that require using the hand rails as foot supports.

So now I have 9 holes ... five original to retain the grab rail inside the boat backed by fender washers on the deck... and four backed by fender washers for the 2 2ft SS rails in the cabin {each side}

My rails were shot, and leaked in several places.

I copied Vic's set up and am very happy with how it turned out. It's a very simple and effective set up. Only thing I 'improved' upon from his set up (because I was too twitchy to drill too many new holes) was that I (re)used the two original outer most holes to mount the ends of the handrails. So I have 7 holes. I do hope never to do this again or ever see a leak again, so I tried to do it well by drilling out larger, filling with epoxy and then drilling the smaller diameter bolt holes.

Thanks for the resonses. Where did you get the S/S handrails, and do you by any chance have a picture ?

Phil

I've made up several sets of Teak rails and now have the template for making them Based on the current price of the 6/4 stock needed they would run about $300.00 for a set I could turn them around in about 2 weeks

do not use included black rubber gasket... I used 4200

I'm about to order some custom stainless rails. Joe (who I met on this list) ordered some using this drawing, which is based on measurements he took.

My question: are all of these the same? Can I reasonably expect that handrails on J/30s are interchangeable?

Hope to make this a 1-boat-trip project (my usual story: 4.5 hours to Charleston).

thanks - dan

There is one wrinkle - there is a slight crown running aft->forward so the rails need to be bent a few degrees - more than you can do by hand with stainless. From what I remember it is nearly an inch so you need to make sure when you have them made the person puts this bend in them or you will not get them to mount.

Vic got around this by using two handrails.

I have this project underway.

I ordered 6 x 18" long stock stainless rails to replace the 59" long teak rail. Cost was about $15 each. I could have found them at lower price somewhere else no doubt, but $90 to replace both sides was less than I expected as it was.

The question is what to do with the interior rails that I want to keep in place. I was thinking of simply epoxying them to the ceiling. Will that work? I don't want to threw-bolt them.

It should work as long as you do not use them for anything more than hanging a few towels or other light weight stuff, but the last thing you want when you are down below in a heavy seaway is to grab a handhold and find yourself flying athwartship with rail in hand. Either through-bolt or remove. (Just throwing a bolt at them won't work for sure.) imho