Brooke, It's been a couple of years, so I don't remember everything, but I think I spent about as much on the stainless steel brackets as I did on the plasteak. Try as I might, I couldn't find any commercially available swim platform brackets that were any larger than 18" deep or so, and I wanted my swim platform to be about 32" deep. I made mock ups out of scrap lumber and took them to a local welding shop and they made me some brackets, and I think that cost about $750. The plasteak came from Ohio (http://www.plasteak.com/osc/). It's made in 12' lengths, but they cut it for me into 8' and 4' pieces for shipping purposes, and I only needed 8' long for my platform (the 4' pieces were used for the smaller blocks). As far as the installation went, the plasteak is really flexible and I just used 2.5" stainless steel screws, predrilled, and it went together pretty fast. I am a general contractor by trade, so this was nothing new for me, but putting together the swim platform I think almost anyone could handle. Getting the brackets right was more challenging-the curve of the transom meant different angles on each bracket, and despite my efforts I still didn't get it just right: I had to shim the outer brackets up a bit. All in all I think the project cost about $1500 dollars, but has been one of the best improvements I have made, considering how user-unfriendly the old platform was. Even if you get a platform made by some company, you still will have to install it yourself. Once you get the brackets on, the rest is very simple by comparison. The brackets are held in place with some 5/8" bolts through the transom with starboard backing plates on the inside of the hull. I was worried about torquing with heavy people standing on the edges of the platform, but so far no troubles. There have been multiple people at once on the thing, and I haven't heard any cracks from the hull. If you have any specific questions, I would be happy to answer them. I think I put this together in about 3 days (or course having the brackets made took time). Getting the old platform off: 1/2 day, putting the brackets on correctly: 3/4 day, putting the plasteak together in place: 1.5 days.
Good luck Tom in Florida --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "UnifliteWorld" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/UnifliteWorld?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
