I picked up a AAA frame with the oar tower mount drilled through both tubes. I can see how drilling the frame rail would help, but drilling the tower seems like overkill unless you didn't want to use set screws on the tower.
Looks like at least one of the cross fittings doesn't have a flat side. What are those called?
The fitting is called an offset tee, and the additional metal is called a holster...
Asking about the tower pipe. Seems hard to confuse the fitting if the pipe diameters are different. Down River Equipment Down River Oar Tower Oar Towers at Down River Equipment
Yes, and Mark had them cast in 1.25 inch pipe. Before the castings came on the scene, most people would just machine a slug with a 5/8 inch hole in it that fit down inside of the inch and a quarter pipe, an inch and a half pipe for that matter of fact. Most people that build frames for Grand Canyon outfitters they'll do it that way to this day, and it works just fine..
If you have ever had an oar tower come out of the socket in the middle of a rapid and slide down the oar, drop off and sink you might see the benefit of pining them. I've seen it happen more than once.
It's a good idea to pin things, speedrail fittings were never intended to build raft frames out of, they're intended use is for handrails.. generally using steel pipe.. building raft frames out of them put stresses on them that was never intended by the manufacturer. Do they work? Most of the time, but the problem with the set screws is getting them tight enough so they don't slip, and won't loosen, and not caving in the soft aluminum pipe underneath them at the same time. Delicate balancing act..
You may not lose them, but when they loosen up and your oar tower folds flat against the side of the raft, while you're still on the water, chances are you're not going to have time to break out the propane torch next to the rubber raft to heat them up to loosen the set screw to retighten it again.. loctite, especially red loctite, is a patently bad idea in my opinion...
Seems like using 1.5" pipe would be better with speedrail fittings. Hard to see the advantage of using speedrail over an NRS oar mount with 1.25" pipe frame.
In my opinion, both from an engineering and a boating standpoint the NRS low pro fitting is Superior in every way except one to the cast fittings in the end of a piece of pipe. The bonus to having the latter is that you can adjust the height with a hacksaw, the NRS fittings, you deal with the height you bought.. not that big of a deal at the end of the day, but it's about the only bonus that I can see.
