The Trawl Winch.
I must admit to getting more than a bit fed-up with this ruddy mast. I’d much prefer to be sitting in my deck chair reading a good book. At least I would be if only the weather would settle down. Brilliant sunshine for 10 minutes followed by 10 minutes of big black clouds. And, of course, the instant drop in temperature brings on a chasing wind. Can’t win.
I suppose it was inevitable that the re-built gallows would make the permanent gallows stays slightly out of kilter….especially the two that fasten to the mast. My “solution” to that problem won’t be approved by the fishing fraternity amongst us…but it’s the best I can come up with. This is the point at which I lost patience with the thing and thought it best to move on to something a bit easier. The trawl winch. When I first built “Bayflower” I doubt if this Mayhem site existed, but I wouldn’t really know as I didn’t have a computer to squander so much time on! The point there being that I have no photos of the process of building the winch. When I started it I really hadn’t a clue about it. I knew it was big from grainy pictures I’d seen. I could also surmise that the primary drive gear wasn’t all that much different to any other steam winch. But I still don’t really know if the 2 main wire barrels are permanently linked together or if they can be operated independently. Not that it matters all that much as the drivers side of the thing is hidden under the bridge overhang. What I did pick up on though was that the trawl wires were directed on to the 2 barrels between 2 (4 actually, 2 for each wire) moving rollers. This will prevent the trawl wires just finishing up in a tangled heap on the barrels. Long lost memories of my cadet days came flooding back. When a cargo runner wire gets trapped in an overlying layer of wire there’s a good chance that it will kink and cause all sorts of problems..not least being the odd broken “jaggie” that can put a nasty rip into an unwary hand. Life could have been so much easier if all winches had these geared travelling roller guides. Would have saved the owners a fair amount as well. Steel wire doesn’t come cheap.
Anyway. Without very much in the way of details to refer to I just went ahead with bits of plasticard for the basic structure (based on a sort of amended cargo winch design). Years later when I was building her replacement (to be called “James Cullen) firms like Caldercraft etc. were producing pretty good fittings for their models…including a trawl winch. Wrong scale for me, but “my” model shop was quite happy for me to borrow one of these things and hopefully give me a bit more of an insight in their workings. You may be able to imagine my pleasant surprise at finding that I’d been largely correct in all my original assumptions. So this rebuilt “Bayflower” has the original winch. Cleaned up and repainted, but that’s all. The “Cullen” winch is naturally the better one, but not by much.
The winch as shown in the posted photos is 5” long, 1.75” high and 2.75” wide.
The base is 2 pieces of 1/16” “Perspex” (actually “Glodex” as used in secondary double glazing, and just picked out of a skip). The top layer being slightly smaller than the bottom one. The whole thing being screwed to the deck.
As far as the actual “wire” is concerned…..well I suppose that many “craft” shops sell suitable stuff, but I found that our local “Singer” (as in sewing machines) shop sells various grades of “thread” including a rather thick steel coloured one which was ideal for what I wanted. Man-made fibre, and when run over a block of beeswax is more or less proof against anything. Where do you get beeswax these days? I haven’t a clue. I’ve had mine since the early 1960s.
