Silly rigging question

[bcooke]

Here is a silly one.

When replacing the standing rigging, is it customary to replace the turnbuckles, toggles and other fittings along with the wire? Or is is just the wire and wire end terminals that tend to fatigue and require replacement?

The system looks pretty good, just old with some twisting of the wires and small amounts of corrosion on the end terminals. No elongation, stress marks, or other oddities.

-Britton

[Tim]

It's common to reuse turnbuckles and toggles. It's also common to replace them.

Obviously, the true condition of these items determines whether they can be reused. In any event, you need to know you're going to reuse them or not before you make up the new rigging wires, since the length might be different if you go with new turnbuckles, etc., because the overall length of turnbuckles varies depending on brand, size, and so forth.

If you have the nice heavy bronze turnbuckles, and they're straight, non-galled, and in good condition, it's nice to reuse them. A lot of the time, though, these end up bent or torqued or frozen, and can't or shouldn't be reused. I have all new turnbuckles, toggles, etc., but my old ones were frozen, bent junk. (I still have them somewhere, though.)