It was a scary thing to cut into the crossbeams knowing there was no turning back after starting with that. Since I originally had not planned on these hinges, the crossbeam section needed some modification to make it work. I had to chisel out the old spacer block after cutting the crossbeam. Where the hinges had to go just happened to be right where one of spacer blocks was put for spacing between the two stringers. That block, had it been big enough to take the hinge bolts would have been perfect. But alas it wasn't to be. So I had to carefully chisel that out, then dress up a new block that had the length that would be needed to properly secure the hinge. All that went surprisingly well. When installing the hinges the fit was just tight enough that I had to lube up the crossbeam to be able to get the hinge on. I chose to do that with epoxy so as to seal it all up and keep moisture from doing damage to the wood underneath the stainless steel. The fit was still tight enough that I still had to pound the things into place. But it wasn't so tight that it shaved any wood off or otherwise destroyed anything. In other words... perfect! Each hinge side has 4 flush mount machine screws that are epoxy bonded into the now solid wood core of the beam. Sometime after the epoxy completely hardens I'll clean up around the edges and touch up with some paint. What started out as kind of a scary project has turned out to be well worth it. These hinges are very stout... probably quite a bit stronger than they need to be. But better safe than sorry! One more good thing I noticed is that there is no room for any rattling in the hinges. Everything is tight fitting which should minimize annoying sounds while sailing.
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