Manual windlasses

[eyck]

Greetings all,

Have been looking around for manual windlasses the last few weeks for a future project and thought I'd share my findings.

As mentioned by someone else here, Lunenburg does not make windlasses anymore. Since they have no commercial interest in these products, I thought they might be interested to sell or license the plans, but to (literally) quote the reply "MANAGEMENT IS NOT INTERESTED IN THIS TYPE OF PROPOSAL". This is a pity indeed.

Other companies:


Davey & Co: http://tinyurl.com/yarplvf (http://www.davey.co.uk/pdf/anchors.pdf)
Toplicht, one-gear: http://tinyurl.com/ycb5ws9
Toplicht, two-gear: http://tinyurl.com/yd6u9ep
Wilmex, one-gear: http://tinyurl.com/yardqps
Wilmex, two-gear: http://tinyurl.com/yfawllu
Lofrans: http://tinyurl.com/yjobo3g
ABI: http://tinyurl.com/yjjg88r
Vetus: http://tinyurl.com/yj5mb8w

Any other sources?

Best regards,
Mats
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[johngsandusky]

I think Ideal still makes them.

[Todd D]

I have had a Lofrans Royal for about 6 years. It is slow, but much more robust than I expected. I am very pleased with it.

[KAIROS]

I have had a Lofrans Royal for about 6 years. It is slow, but much more robust than I expected. I am very pleased with it.

My sailboat (28', 9500 lbs.) had an aluminum windlass when built in 63. The windlass was worn out and that British brand (Milne?) discontinued. When we refit recently we installed a new Lofrans Royal. It is light and powerful enough for our purposes, though slow. It's pretty good looking for it's type and seems very well made. If you want a better manual windlass you might rebuild an old Simpson Lawrence (Tiger, I think), or go for the bonze ABI.....like that on Serrafyn. The Lofrans is probably the best deal though if you can accept alluminum (about $800 US).

Here's how it looked as we were deciding where to drill all the holes and make purpleheart backing blocks...

http://www.yachtflyers.com/forum_images/windlass_layout.jpg