Wooden mast

Frogmogman

Frogmogman

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I thought some of you might appreciate seeing the wooden mast which my friend Fabien (a French boatbuilder in Sulawesi) has built for the Wharram Tiki 30 he is going to build for himself.

The mast is built of wood/epoxy. He built it in two halves so that he could epoxy the inside before bonding the two halves together and planing and sanding it round.

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My neighbour is having one made for his gaffer, having a serious breakage due to crew error. May be some photos for that soon, it would be an interesting comparison. The boat 57ft on deck, so it’s a meaty thing.
 
Chiara’s slave said:
My neighbour is having one made for his gaffer, having a serious breakage due to crew error. May be some photos for that soon, it would be an interesting comparison. The boat 57ft on deck, so it’s a meaty thing.
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Ouch! I hope insurance is playing ball when it comes to that bill!
 
Todays YBW tip… read your insurance. The rig is usually not covered for racing. Mine isn’t, which would be er, unfortunate, we have a carbon mast. The cover is perfectly usual. That was the case for Kelpie too.
 
Chiara’s slave said:
Todays YBW tip… read your insurance. The rig is usually not covered for racing. Mine isn’t, which would be er, unfortunate, we have a carbon mast. The cover is perfectly usual. That was the case for Kelpie too.
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It depends on your policy.

When we lost the mast over the side of Moonlight in a solent points race, the insurer picked up half the tab.
 
Nice birds mouth mast. My son & i built a 10m one last spring for his 10m proa. Usually like yours you would use 8 staves as it makes assembly easy & the birds mouth angles are a simple 45 degrees.
We had one fine baulk of Sitka spruce left over from a mast build 40 years ago, It was 10" x 3" & it so worked out that if we made the staves for an 8 stave job we didnt have enough timber the staves being bigger.
We worked out that if we made 10 staves the smaller size meant we could get them out of the baulk with virtually zero waste. Unfortunately this meant odd angles each side 33 & 57 degrees respectively. The accuracy had to be spot on & i fitted a new fence & feed rollers to the saw.
The angle difference means staves some tapered at the top end have to all be arranged the right way, We did a dry run first to be sure & assembled it in one go. All went really well & the mast is superb.
 

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Keith 66 said:
Nice birds mouth mast. My son & i built a 10m one last spring for his 10m proa. Usually like yours you would use 8 staves as it makes assembly easy & the birds mouth angles are a simple 45 degrees.
We had one fine baulk of Sitka spruce left over from a mast build 40 years ago, It was 10" x 3" & it so worked out that if we made the staves for an 8 stave job we didnt have enough timber the staves being bigger.
We worked out that if we made 10 staves the smaller size meant we could get them out of the baulk with virtually zero waste. Unfortunately this meant odd angles each side 33 & 57 degrees respectively. The accuracy had to be spot on & i fitted a new fence & feed rollers to the saw.
The angle difference means staves some tapered at the top end have to all be arranged the right way, We did a dry run first to be sure & assembled it in one go. All went really well & the mast is superb.
Click to expand...
I'm sure even Leo would be impressed!
 
I have built a few of the eight staved masts, but smaller than the ones shown. It is a very quick way to get a neat, strong, but light mast. Fun too. The mast, yard and boom on my faering are all built this way.
 
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