Rebuilding a snatch block

Turn the side plates around?

Hi Team,
I believe Neil is correct as the sheave outer edges are not sitting fully into the radius of the cheek plate-- as is shown in the photo.
Simply pull the sheave pin and rotate the cheek plates around--you can likely do this without removing the lower pin in the cheek plates--swing the plates downwards--the angle out wards of the cheek plate upper pin arms will then be closer together and the sheave will be sitting against what appears to be a flat side face on the current outer face of the cheek plates.
Sometimes we do not see the forest for the trees and the answer can be simple --been there many times until I stood back and thought about things after a breather.
Cheers,
Eddie B.

It’s not quite that simple. I tried changing the position of the nuts on the sheave pin but that didn’t help either. I’m scratching my head on this one. Sometimes I get it within an 1/8” other times it’s of by 1/2” and there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it.

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Any chance you flipped the pulley from its original position inside the housing?

Also try turning the bolt and nut one flat at a time to see if there is some relief given. If it's old school manufacture, the bolt and nut heads may not be even

"Unwind" the sides one turn. A Skookum, RopeMaster and other similar blocks like that do not fit tight. There is always some play in them.
A 16" Skookum weighs about 150 pounds and when we got tired of moving them in one piece through the brush we would break them down into sides and sheave. Putting them back together, you just spun the sides back until the yoke fit.
Nice job of restoration.