Ozark County man invents system to automatically raise and lower docks


Times Photo/Bruce Roberts Stanley Link shows off his automatic boat dock winch system that he built in his hangar-turned-machine shop at the Lost Mine Airport on Bull Shoals Lake in southwest Ozark County.

An Ozark County man has invented a device to solve a problem that has plagued boat dock owners for decades.

He’s taking dock lowering and raising to another level, if you will.

Stanley Link, a retired machinist, has invented a system that lowers and raises boat docks as the lake levels rise or fall, and it does it automatically.

“To me this is a wow kind of thing … it’s a no-brainer,” said Link. “Of course I am the inventor so I would think that, but I’ve shown this to other dock owners and they thought the idea was a home run.”

Link operated a machine and gear shop in the St. Louis area for nearly 25 years, making custom gears and parts for heavy machinery. 

“My motto was always if I can’t fix it, I’ll make you a new one,” Link said.

 

Moving to Ozark County

In 2001 Link sold his machine shop but kept a trailer park he had owned and grown for 20 years. He began looking for a property to purchase. 

“I was looking for a place about an hour’s flight from St. Louis and some place that had a landing strip … I’m a pilot and own my own plane,” Link explained. 

He said he was looking for an area to retire outside of the growing crime and congestion of St. Louis but still wanted to be within an hour so he could travel back and forth to oversee his trailer park.

After some research in the Ozarks, Link found the Lost Mine Airport in southwest Ozark County on the banks of Bull Shoals Lake.

“So we bought the property and started building our house,” he said. 

 

The problem with owning a boat dock

He also became a boat dock owner and, right away, discovered a problem that every dock owner has to deal with — raising and lowering the dock as the lake rises and falls.

“I’m guessing I have to move my dock 40 or 50 feet each year,” Link said. “The lake is high in the spring and then drops all summer usually, and then fall and winter rains send the lake back up, so you have to go out and crank your dock up and down all the time … I thought ‘there has to be a better way,’” Link said.

Another challenge is that Link, like a lot of boat dock owners, is only at his lake house part of the time.

“I’m like a lot of people who have docks, I am not always here, so then you have to hire somebody or have someone who you can depend on to move the dock up or down for you,” Link said.

“So I started looking on the internet for some kind of system that would automatically crank the dock in and out and I found nothing,” Link said.

 

Hangar-turned-machine shop

That’s when Link’s machinist mind started clicking. He also admits he missed his machine shop and didn’t like paying “a hundred dollars for something I could make in 10 minutes for a few dollars.”

“I told my wife that I was going to put a machine shop in my hangar, and that one of the first things I was going to build was a system that would raise and lower boat docks automatically.”

So Link began looking for equipment you can’t find in Ozark County. He scoured the internet and started tracking down machines needed for his project, traveling to places like Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to acquire things like lathes, drill presses and enormous grinders, machines that weigh tons.

When the Ozark County Times visited with Link recently in his hangar on an early fall afternoon, he was sharpening his neighbors’ lawn mower blades on a giant grinder that’s likely worth around $20,000 in the industrial world.

“I find them cheap and go through them and rebuild them if they need it,” Link said.

 

Prototype built, seeking manufacturers

So with his hangar-turned-shop outfitted to the teeth with machines, Link began his adventure building an automatic boat dock system.

He said he began the trial-and-error design and building process of his first prototype in the spring of 2021. 

“So I got it built and on my dock in December, and I’ve been fine tuning my design ever since,” Link said.

He said he has built three of the units. “The first one worked, but it was big and noisy,” Link said. “The second one is the one that I’ve been using on my dock since December.”

Link said the one on his dock has worked great. “It was still a little big. It works great, I just wanted to make it smaller and fine-tune some things,” Link said.

The third one he built is sitting on his work table in his hangar and is the one he is pitching to manufacturers to produce.

“I’m just the inventor,” Link explained. “I don’t want to go into business producing these, but I know there would be a good market for them.”

Link said there are around one million boat dock owners in the United States. “That’s a decent market, even if you could get only 10 percent of the market, you’re talking a very lucrative opportunity.”

Link has a patent pending on his invention and has contacted some manufacturers. 

 

Details on the system

“Everybody who sees it work says ‘why didn’t somebody come up with this a long time ago,’” Link said.

The unit uses a self-contained 12-volt battery that has a solar-powered maintainer, switches, an electric motor, a brake and a hydraulic-powered gear and chain drive system that can be set to automatic or can be controlled with a remote switch.

Link said the system could easily be modified to be controlled with a smartphone app.

The unit uses cables and heavy counterweights that keep the tie-off cables on the dock tight at all times whether the lake level rises or falls.

“When the lake level rises, the cable loosens and activates a switch that senses that the cable is loose and switches on the motor to pull in 15 inches of cable at a time,” Link said. 

Likewise, when the lake level drops, the cable becomes tighter than the allowance set on the unit, triggering a switch to release 15 inches of cable at a time, Link explained.

“I wanted to keep it simple, but I wanted it to be well built and effective,” Link said.

“This thing may only run 10 seconds a week, but it keeps everything tight and keeps everything in place,” Link said. 

He compared the system to guitar strings and how an instrument has to be tuned right and the strings taut but not overtightened.

“You can also operate it with a remote so there’s no more wading in the water in the winter to move your dock in, or if it gets hung up on a rock, you can use the remote to move it off,” Link said.

 

The next step

Link said he’s having a little difficulty getting an audience with manufacturers. He has contacted some who said they would like to look at the system.

“If I could get them here and let them see it in action, I think they’d be onboard,” Link said.

He said he hopes to get the system out to a manufacturer within the next year that can start producing them.

“I don’t want to build them, but I want to stay onboard and be involved in any fine-tuning or changes that might come up,” Link said.

As far as his machine shop, Link said he has several friends who build and fly kit-airplanes and others who are “always needing a part” or something fixed. 

“They keep me pretty busy,” Link said.

 

A Rolls Royce from royalty and other surprises

Link’s hangar-turned-machine shop doesn’t only house the impressive machine shop, it also houses a few other projects, including a 1937 Rolls Royce coach that once belonged to the Duke and Duchess of Scotland. The door sills of the Rolls have Queen Elizabeth’s signature.

“I think the royal coach builder was the one who built these for the Duke and Duchess of Scotland,” Link said. “I’ll get back on that project one day.” 

He noted that he had put the Rolls Royce project on pause while working on the boat dock system.

So where’s his plane?

Link, who has been a pilot for more than 40 years, flies a Mooney 201. It’s in another hangar at the air strip.

“This is a real nice community,” Link said. “We’ve lived here for nearly 20 years and we love it. We go back and forth to St. Louis quite a bit, and it’s so much better here. It’s quiet.”

And since he installed his boat dock system on his dock on Bull Shoals Lake, being a dock owner is much more enjoyable.

“It really makes it nice,” Link said. “Some of my neighbors have looked at my system, and they’d like to have one.Everybody always wants to know what it will cost.”

Link said he estimated the retail price of the system should be around $4,000. 

“I know what it costs to build it,” Link said. “And if you calculate in the industry’s usual margin, it will probably be around the $4,000 mark,” he said.

“Of course the price will be determined by the retailer,” Link said. “Right now I am just looking for a manufacturer.”

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