Hello Mike,

Thank you for the kind words on the parts I made. Yes, I am in the US.

It took me 5 or 6 weeks to make the batch of parts you see in the pictures. The steps are:

• I spent about a week measuring and drawing the parts, thinking about which measurements are critical for the part to work, and then tweaking the 3D model and cut path. On this project, I am wondering a lot about
  • The inside corner where the plate and wall meet. I am thinking about doing a rounded curve with a ball mill and need to make sure it will not interfere with the latch sweep.
  • The necessary thickness of the base plate and if we might need to make it from aluminum to survive abuse (or if the touch composite I used on the handles will do the job well)
• After tweaking the design files, I cut samples from scrap, verified the fit on the boat, and then ordered material.
  • The black plastic you see takes me about a week to get in
  • The aluminum can sometimes be *found* in the cut-offs pile of my shop. Otherwise, it is usually 2 days to get in the stock.
• Then I waited to get machine time to cut the parts. The machines in the shop usually run 24x7 and personal projects have to run on the weekends.
• Once I had machine time, things happened really fast. Most of the parts you saw in my pictures were a minute or two per cycle.
• Then the aluminum parts were anodized, about a 3 day turn around.

Assuming no surprises, this is about 4 to 6 weeks.

Without a sample of the original part in hand, there is a really high probability of surprises. 

Maybe we can find somebody in the group who has a broken one they could part with temporarily? 

Let's find a way to do this, I enjoy these sorts of challenges.


Charles