diy endless line furler (25 - 30 dollar)

For some time I have been toying with the idea to make a endless-line furler from standard automotive parts. Below is my fist try. It's made of an aluminium pulley (10 euro = 14 dollar), a standard skf double row ball bearing - type 3200 if I remember correctly - (10 euro), some stainless steel bolts and eyes and some plastic parts made of cutting board.

Since I have a backup forestay I can take some risks: even if the furler will fail nothing serious will happen.

The drum is a standard aluminium v-belt pulley (type Z). This pulley is 8 cm diameter. I would rather have a bit bigger pulley, but couldn't because my lathe is not big enough to handle bigger diameters.
I drilled 8 holes through the pulley (hope the photo shows the idea) to make sure the furling line won't slip. Big succes - the line locks in the pulley beyond my expectations.

Below the furler before assembly. From right to left: tang to mount the jib, cap made of cutting board to seal bearing, M10 bolt, bearing, the pulley with a recess for the bearing (made that with the lathe, of course), 3 rings to form a spacer, line-retaining drum made of cutting board (also on the lathe), piece of cutting board with an eye to feed the line, ring, nut with a hole and shakle.

I put the bearing in a liberal amount of grease, and sealed the bearing-recess with a plastic cap. I think this should be watertight enough.

The eye for feeding the furling line is held in place with a small recess in the furling drum (below).

Below a part I'm not too happy with yet: I used a 10 mm bolt to mount the shackle of the furler. Because it's threaded it's effecively less than 10 mm diameter, and with a 6,5 mm hole drilled through there is not much steel to hang on to. To fix this I drilled through the bolt and the nut, hoping this will be somewhat stronger. Added benefit: the nut is locked in place. I will probably replace this bolt by a unthreaded 10 mm rod.
Other part I'm not too happy with is the tang on the topside of the furler. there was not enough space above the bearing to just 'bolt through', soI fixed the tang with two short M6 bolts. Because the shape of the tang (wide, v-shaped), the forces on it will be quite high. I will probably think of another solution, but not before I have done some tests to see if the furler works.

Movie to show the furler: as you can see it can turn and swiffle in all directions, and it's not much work to put the line on the drum.(PS the movie is often down, I'm sorry)

Working on details

I added cleats in the center of the floats - will make tying up to a dock much easier.
Detail of my new halyard-routing. The halyards exit the mast about two meters above the deck, and run through two blocks, then to an organiser and then to the cockpit.

I found handling the jibsheets without winches too heavy with a bit more wind (even with 2:1 setup) and therefore added two winches. It's a shame in a way the boat gets cluttered more and more with stuff. My plan was to keep the rig very simple and to use as little as possible hardware.

Something I should have known: make sure there is a hole in the anchor locker hatch to run lines or chain through to the locker. I had to make this hole off center because there is a tab in the center of the anchor well to support the hatch.

I messed up most of the trampoline grommets because I didn't have the proper die set to fix the grommets, so I replaced them with a piece of webbing (sandwich webbing-trampoline-webbing).

Without the grommets the trampoline is not so 'bling' anymore, but I believe the webbing-loops will spread the loads much better thant the grommets. I didn't remove the grommets closest to the hull, because the lashings to those grommets have to be loosened every time you fold, and with the lashing throug a grommet that's easier than with a lashing through a webbing.

Detail: the webbing runs through the holes of the former grommets. The 'eye' of the webbing will be on the lower side of the trampoline.

Next project will be: making some sort of removable galley with a kerosene burner because next summer I will be sailing with my family for a few weeks and I want some cruising comforts by then. My plan is to make a sort of box which will stand on one half of one of the cabin-seats. Ideas are welcome....