Just thought I'd share my current project. I'm repairing a boat with a ripped off cabin top winch. The winch was mounted on a pad molded in the deck. Molded in the deck under the pad was an aluminum disc. The winch fasteners were tapped into the disc. The cabin liner was immediately under that. The winch, pad and disc all separated from the deck.
Since there was no access to the underside of the pad, there was no easy way to get beneath the pad and add structure for strength. The plan was to clean up the pad, re-attach it with epoxy. Simply epoxying the pad down would have very little strength so the winch needs to be through bolted. (Of course a minor gelcoat repair is required to cosmetically finish the pad.) Since the backing plate will be visible from the cabin, it needs to be nice. Anyway, I ordered a couple of pieces of 1/4 inch aluminum plate on eBay. (You can find cut scraps fairly cheap there.) I used my Bosch jigsaw with a metal cutting blade to size the pad and rough trim the corners. Then I shaped the corners with a belt sander with 80 grit and then finished all the edges with the belt sander and 120 grit. The edges were hand sanded with 320 grit. The exposed flat surface was hand sanded with 1000 grit wet/dry then polished with a buffing wheel and polishing compound. Looks nice!! Whole process took about 30-40 minutes. The winch will be re-installed with washers, lock washers and cap nuts for a nice finished look. Dennis C. Touche' 35-1 #83 Mandeville, LA
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