What I used to do Posted by: guideboatguy on Dec-08-12 7:50 PM (EST)
I don't have any boats with footbraces now, but when I had one, I noticed right away that the risk of losing a wingnut was great. I put "Form-a-Gasket" on the bolt threads. There are two kinds of "Form-a-Gasket", hardening and non-hardening. I used the non-hardening style, so the wingnuts could always be loosened and re-installed as needed, but the gooey nature of that stuff on the threads insured that the wingnuts could never simply rattle loose on their own. Even if already loose, the wingnuts would stay put unless manually turned.