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Brass has no place on a boat save in bells, horns, light fixtures (perhaps), fancy work or buttons.
From an engineering view point, the best material is bronze which has more than adaquate strength and none of the problems that SS is subject to in the given application. As most don't care for the green look, however, 316 Stainless is often chosen although, if you rigging is galvanized, bronze might be accepteable. Galvanized mild steel won't last long enough to be worth the effort. Whatever your choice, if you had crevice corrosion in the existing chain plates, check your bulkheads to ensure you don't have rot there from water intrusion that needs repair before you install the new chain plates. Also, there is a good article in the current edition of Good Old Boat on how to build footing pads for chain plates that can help prevent water intrusion around the deck plates that you might want to look into. If I remember correctly, these should work on an Islander 24.
You really should make the new ones out of 316L stainless steel. You should also work to prevent any water egress, since that is what caused the old ones to fail from crevice corrosion in the first place.
Well they haven't failed. Yet. I may go with bronze.
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