Finally! Got the shafts out of the seized windlass. It’s been about three weeks since I got the thing and I’ve spent way too many days trying to beat, pound, pull, and press the shafts out. Victory!

Now I need to make up some replacement springs and clean everything up and it should go back together and bring joy to our anchor heaving times for years to come.

For those of you wondering why this was so difficult and how it finally happened: The shafts are all held in place by Teflon bushings which makes heating the thing up a bit hairy. The housing isn’t square in relation to the gears so the gears need to be braced before any serious force can be applied. That housing is cast aluminum which makes any hard impact feel like it’s about to crack the thing in half and the shafts are brass which means they squish if you use anything harder than brass to try to pound them out. Weeks and cans of pb blaster, the sacrifice of a few tools, a strained friendship or two, some carefully applied heat, and finally just hitting the fucking thing hard enough made it happen. All that to replace two springs.

Happy Time.