- no info on rigging using a lo ose guage.
- The guage itself has the tension pounds indicator but am wondering what Hunter B&R riggs should be using for recommended settings. 20% of breaking makes me a bit nervouse.
Colin, I have broken your concerns into two parts to facilitate a response. Tensioning a rig is part science and part rigger voodoo.
1. Lack of detailed specifications for the process of using a tool to tension your standing rigging. The tool you have is designed to give you a measurement of the individual wire tension applied to that wire. The required tension for any boat is not fixed number. It is an approximate for the wire you are tensioning based on the wire’s properties. I have heard it from rigger’s being ranged from 10 to 20 percent of wire breaking strength.
@Will Gilmore gives you key insight in that it is not all about the individual wire tension, but about the effect tensioning each of the wires is having on the mast and boat.
2. I can understand your “nervousness”. You want to get it right, yet not break your boat. The use of your loos gauge tool is to let you create a basic starting point. Once you get a balanced “in column” rig tension of 10% that’s where the voodoo begins.
Here is a good discussion on that voodoo rigging that occurs away from the dock out on the water.
Start by slackening all shrouds and stays until all feel very slack. Then, tighten the backstay (and therefore the forestay) to a few turns tighter than hand tight. Any runners, checkstays or othe…
coxeng.co.uk
Tensioning a rig is not about cranking hard on each wire to a tool specific value. It is more like tuning a guitar where you sneak up on all the strings tension at the same time. Once the side shrouds give you that initial 10% of wire tension, and the fore shroud sag is gone, it is time to go sailing and see if the boat responds properly.