old wooden mast - replace or keep

Alastairdent

Alastairdent

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we have a 28ft steel boat with an old wooden mast. It appears to be in 3 sections, scarfed together. The sail track is external Al.

It's heavily over-rigged - 2 lower shrouds, spreader with upper shrouds forestay and backstay.

currently the rigging screws are seized, I've left engine oil soaking down the threads.

Question is, should I try to keep the mast going, or look for an Al replacement?
 
If there is nothing wrong with the mast other than seized rigging screws, then why replace? Even if the rigging screws are beyond redemption, which I doubt, just replacing them would be a whole lot easier and cheaper than replacing the entire mast.
 
The scarfs are 'feathery' at the ends.

I'm worried about the glue - I guess that it is probably Recorcinol (sp?), and I've heard that tends to fail after 20-30 years.
 
There are many apochryphal stories about glues which fail after a set time or under a given set of conditions. These probably originate in the era of casein glues which certainly did fail. I am personally very skeptical about these stories when applied to modern synthetic resin glues. While the ends of a scarph may be 'feathery', I'll bet that the rest of the glued surface is just fine. You may like to epoxy a band of light fibre glass around the mast over the scarphs so that nothing can catch on them and no weather can get in. If the timber is still sound, I'd vote strongly for keeping the mast. Are the turnbuckles galvanised or stainless? Zinc in threads has an unfortunate tendency to melt under the heat of friction, welding the whole thing together. If this has happened, the easiest solution is to replace the turnbuckles.
Peter.
 
Peterduck, that is a great idea. I will bind the scarfs - as it is an external sailtrack, this will be easy. Ta muchly.

the turnbuckles are galvanized. Well, I guess they were 10 years ago.
 
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