Realistic Security Chain ?

[(PeteCresswell)]

Not Fort Knox, just a kayak, stored on the beach in a salt-water environment.

Windsurfing shop nearby had a bunch of boards stolen couple years back and the perp used bolt cutters on the cables.

What I am thinking is the smallest gauge chain that will resist garden-variety, low-end Home Depot/Lowe's bolt cutters.

Is this realistic, or can low-end bolt cutters get through 3/8" chain (the largest size I would consider). If so, I guess I would fall back to the smallest chain that a pair of diagonal cutting pliers could not cut.

Also, there is matching a padlock to the chain..... The padlocks I saw at Home Depot today probably resist bolt cutters at least as much as

3/8" chain, but did not look all that robust in the context of salt spray and blowing sand 24-7. Maybe some sort of bag around the lock?

Galvanized, of course....

[gfretwell]

I don't know where you are but in Florida, salt water will trash a galvanized chain pretty fast.

This is about 2 years old

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per [e-mail]:

Wow!.... *That* is impressive....

Alternatives?

When I kept my HobieCat moored off the Outrigger Canoe Club in Hawaii, we used stainless steel cable and Nico-Press fittings for the mooring setup that the buoys were anchored to. I used it for a few years and it was looking pretty good several years after that.

The "Anchor" for this chain will be a 4-foot section of a bigass piling that's been washed up on the beach for a couple of years now - the section layed horizontal and buried to about a foot below surface level.

After seeing your pic - and pricing chain - I am thinking about looping/NicoPressing stainless steel cable (which I already have - old Hobie rigging) around the piling and attaching chain to cable.

Besides reducing the amount of chain that I have to buy initially, this would also reduce the number of feet of chain that have to be replaced after a few years and make replacement less work.

Chain bites the big one: scoop away the sand, cut the bad stuff off, attach new chain to the cable via one of those pound-in links.

Then the question becomes "What kind of NicoPress sleeves?".... electrolysis and all that....

OTOH, maybe *I* won't last a few years: Problem Solved..... -)

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per Oren:

I am thinking my primary concern will be infiltration of sand and salt into the tumbler mechanism.

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per Oren:

Tangentially:

I especially liked the battery-powered electric grinder approach.... -)

[micky]

A friend ran a ministorage. If customers bought a lock from her, she already had a key to it, but if they used their own and she had to get in, after they had stopped paying for a long time, they used an angle grinder, AC powered. The best locks that fit the doors were the ones that look like hockey pucks, with a thick bolt that went in a circle when you locked or unlocked it. Is that clea?

She worked there 25 years and never had a big fight with a customer or anyone. She learned how to handle people from the owner, who didn't do things like padlock the locker with his own lock if they didn't pay, and then make them pay up to get their stuff back. Even if they were 2 or 3 months behind, she would call them and tell them to come and get their stuff, without paying what they owed, and if they didn't come -- I think she gave them 2 weeks but maybe more if they had a good story. But I think they all came within a week if they were coming at all. And when they didn't she sometimes gave me first crack at the stuff and then the guy who cleaned out the locker.

She had about 600 lockers of various sizes that were all rented for 15 years and mostly for the remaining 10 (so she dealt with thousands of poeple) , a small girl, worked in the office alone, often took cash for payments, but was never robbed or hassled. Sometimes lockers were broken into but usually by drug-dealing partners who didn't want to be partners anymore. Stumpy Strumpet the bimbus for dogcatcher

[gfretwell]

The kayak place up the street from me secures them with SS cable. It will stop the casual thief but if they bring tools, there is not much that will stop them. Nothing will stop a grinder.

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per [e-mail]:

Any idea what they use to join the SS cable?

In a prior post, I cited NicoPress in a mooring application but now that I am thinking about it I'm not so sure.

Checked out "Galvanized" u-bolt type connectors at Home Depot, but the "U" part looked to me like it would corrode quickly.

I'm thinking a wrap of SS cable around the buried piling and then chain from the buried piling to the surface.... that being predicated on the (unwarranted?) assumption that there is some weight of chain 3/8" or less that is significantly harder to cut than cable.

Cable exposed to the public, I would not trust - both because any old bolt cutter can easily cut it and because somebody with patience can cut it one-strand-at-a-time with a pair of diagonal cutting pliers or even a screw driver used as a twisting lever... been there, done that when I lost the key to my bike lock with 1/2" SS cable.

But SS cable buried with the right connectors would seem to be very long lasting.

[DerbyDad03]

...snip...

I can't remember if I was a mischievous teenager or not, but if I was, I imagine that the bigger the chain, the higher the odds that I would have taken action to show you a thing or two. I can't take your kayak for a joy ride? Well, I can probably put a hole it.

That's something you can't really protect against without on-site security, so you may be wasting your time trying to prevent anything other than the basic no-tool variety of theft. Sure, prevent the casual "it's not even secured" type of theft/usage but once you try to get fancy, there may be little to no return on your investment.

Will there be any type of security lighting? Motion detection? Signs statin g that video surveillance is in use?

Fake dogs barking?

[gfretwell]

They use the crimped ferrules with eyes on each end that they padlock together.

Maybe, if this is that much of a theft problem, you should take the kayak home. Nothing is going to stop a determined thief.

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per [e-mail]:

I would agree. But I am thinking of it as more of a moron/drunk problem right now. But that could change.

[Doug Miller]

"(PeteCresswell)" wrote in news:8febua56hl67dgp048vd6usai8uekn3d4p@

4ax.com:

Keep in mind that there is *nothing* you can do to prevent a sufficiently determined thief from stealing your kayak. The best strategy IMO is to make your kayak more difficult to steal than your neighbors' kayaks.

[Robert Green]

news:8febua56hl67dgp048vd6usai8uekn3d4p@

determined thief from

difficult to steal than

That's a good idea and a variation of the old joke "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun YOU!" (-: