The orriginal chain plates on the Hunter 33 are 5/16 " thick with washers welded on both sides to bring the pin hole thickness to 3/8. The cover plates have 5/16" openings which means they can not be removed unless the plates are pulled. Mostly just a pain in the butt.
I had 3/8" thick plates made up by Garhauer. The plan is to pull the old plates, open up the holes in the deck getting rid of any soft core, ( there shouldn't be much core because the pass through openings are very close to the edge of the deck where the inner and outer skins come back together). Mold raised islands around the openings similar to what was done in the "Good Old Boat" article, except in epoxy rather than wood. I will open up the slot in the trim plates using the top notch, high quality, China made X - Y table and equaly precision also China made machine vise I bought from Enco on line for about $100. Guaranteed accurate to 1/4". Or so. Assembly will be with some grey butyl I got on line from a small company only a few people have heard of.
My feeling is that the trim plates can help to push the butyl into the opening the chain plates come through. They also can make it look a bit better, although as some people can attaes, cosmetics are not my first priority.
I will be taking pictures at times when my hands are not covered in epoxy and fully ecpect to post them here within the next 10 years or so. Ah, better idea; maybe I can wheedle H33CRich into doing the post. He's ssooo much better at that than I am!
I'm guessing this is the issue Higgs is looking at.