New transom supports, swim platform and spiral stairs

[quincyscuba]

Hello everyone, a little over a month a ago I posted that I was wanting to replace my swim platform. After your advice and many searches on the forum I have completed replacing my supports and Swim platform. In addition we built and installed new stairs. Everything came out great. The wood we used is from the old platform. The platform was 28" deep and is now 47" deep.
Thank You for your support and advice. If you have any questions on what I did I will be happy to share what I learned in building and installing these.

Thank You to Corey and Jim for all your help.

Rob
Lorelei IV

 

[quincyscuba]

 

[Beachcomber]

Rob,
Looks great!!

 

[seaway]

Nice. Very user friendly.

 

[Angela]

I want this! Where did you have the platform fabricated and what was the cost? Ditto for the stairs. Thanks for sharing.

 

[quincyscuba]

The platform and stairs are powder-coated aluminum. The supports are 3 inch stainless steel angle. With the help of my good friends, Jim and Corey, I fabricated almost everything myself. The total cost of materials was about $4000, including the powder-coat cost. I figure between the 3 of us there was about 120-140 man-hours labor.

 

[GJH]

Really beautiful work judging from the pictures. Costs sound about right, I was quoted 10-12k by a boat yard 5 years ago for a spiral stair and a glass platform. How did you bind the aluminum and stainless pieces together to prevent corrosion of the AL? TefGel?

 

[lumina]

Hi All,

Rob, really great job. It blends in so well and looks a billion times easier to get aboard.

A question,,,when you removed the transom supports, was the transom solid or cored?

Thanks.

 

[Plan B2]

I am in the middle of the same project. I am having the fiberglass platform stretched from 31" to approximately 44". I think I have a local fabricator for the aluminum stairs, but he is concerned about shaping the handrail. Your approach may solve that issue. How did you bend those tight radius?

 

[quincyscuba]

I used washers from Fastenal. They are stainless on one side and rubber on the other. By the time I was done at Fastenal the bill was over $200. However this is something I will be keeping an eye on.

My transom was solid fiberglass, no glassed in plate many speak of. I was able to place baking plates on the two outside supports but the water tank prevented access to the 3 middle ones. I figures the stairs will help support and tie in the middle. I also used 3m 5200 caulk on each support and sanded the transom down to the glass to increase the bond. I am making backing plates from the old supports which were 3"X 1/4" brass for the bolts holding on the staircase that show in the master stateroom. Just cutting them in a nice shape and polishing.

The radius were much easier then I feared. I used a hydraulic pipe bender from a local guy who build frames for off road trucks. I went to his shop and with a little experimenting I think it only took about an hour and I had bent 10 pipe sections, so I made pockets in the platform, one set on the rear and each side for ladders I will be making with the left over pipes. I will post pictures when finished but I think they will be really nice.

 

[Vincentc]

Very nice. Functional and good looking.

Have you run the boat since install? I put a 4' folding platform on Lilly Marie, a 43DC. If I run the boat with the platform extended, the platform drags in the wake. Hope you do not have that problem.

Regards

 

[quincyscuba]

no haven't got her back in water yet. I did raise the platform 5" in hope of avoiding this problem.

 

[quincyscuba]

We had the boat out this week and new platform was great. The next phase is a transom davit. we built one and installed it today, to test it out prior to paint. Works awesome. Thanks to everyone who assisted in giving great advice.

Rob

 

[saltshaker]

Very nicely done. The spiral stairs look fantastic. Great idea in the design of the hand rails! If you're not a metal fabricator you should be.

 

[gbharrington]

Wwo, it all looks great. And ditto what Jack said.
I am curious about the davit. What are the materials and do you have a weight for your dinghy?

 

[rwappleton]

X2 on the davit system! Love to see more pics of it too.

 

[quincyscuba]

We made everything out of Aluminum. Mostly 3/16" thickness, the square tube is 4" X 2". We used aluminum for a few reasons. We are in fresh water and figure the Aluminum would hold up, I wanted painted white and the powder coat guys said paint would adhere better to aluminum then stainless, and finally I am a dive instructor and a lot of the dive boats have aluminum ladders with 1 1/4" pipe and I liked the feel, if I would of used stainless it would of been smaller in diameter due to cost and strength to size ratio. The supports were made out of 3" stainless angle 1/4" thick

I am a firefighter and a dive instructor with some good friends with good skill sets and they were great throughout this project. Next is to finish the davit and winch box to make it look slick and then I will be making some nice boarding ladders.

Thank You again for all the knowledge I have gained by lurking on this forum.

 

[bostonhatteras]

Congratulations. You will enjoy your labors for a long time to come. Your platform and stairs a clearly a major improvement to the boat! Cheers!

 

[Plan B2]

Your whole project looks great. I've completed my paltform extension and am now in the design phase for the spiral stair. I think I'll use your handrail design; simple, yet effective.
I also raised the platform a few inches. We went with flat bar and round stack to keep the original design appearance. We were actually lucky with the project. The original braces and hardware needed to be replaced regardless due to fatigue and corrosion.