Wooden Spars replace?

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I am looking at a boat with wooden masts and booms that need replacing..................

Wooden again or aluminium? and what would the price difference be, I know nothing about wooden masts so any comments would be welcome
 
I have a boat with aluminium spars that will be due for replacement soon. In order to keep the boat (built in 1948) authentic I am considering wooden spars; to have these built professionally would cost £2-3k which compares with about £1.5-2k for alloy spars. That's for a Folkboat so you can scale that up for a larger boat. A friend had new alloy spars built for a 42' classic yacht (masthead sloop) and I believe the cost including standing rigging was around £10k. I am contemplating a plan to build my own wooden spars but the cost in terms of time would be considerable...
 
I built wooden spars for my 15ft gunter rigged boat and am doing the same fo my new 21ft gaff cutter. Finding the wood is not so easy but I used the birdsmouth method, which uses 8 batterns. These can be scarf jointed , allowing shorter lengths of wood to make up lengths. Tools required were a table saw and a router + the usuall hand tools (some do it with only a table saw) Glued up with epoxy. If you look at www.duckworksmagazine.com and find the article called Birdsmouth revisited. Just don't use recorcinol glue as he recomends.
Andrew
PM me if you want more info.
 
Try Wesley of Noble Masts
A Shed
Canons Road
Bristol, Avon BS1 5UH

Phone :0117 9297450

He makes beautiful hollow wooden spars.
 
Depends on boat and types of mast(s) as you say masts assume plural in which case sounds expensive whatever you do. Advantage of wooden masts is that they can often be repaired even if broken or with some rot.

You have to face up to the fact that hollow spars (made by Noble or Collars) are more expensive than alloy, and you can build the latter from kits so saving money (Sparlight and Z Spars).

Also have to take into consideration character and value of boat - is originality important and therefore does it influence value.

Some pictures would help to get advice.
 
I would also recommend Wes of Noble Masts.

He made a main and mizzen for my 1947 Herreshoff to the original box section specification, in June 2007.

Main was arround 34 ft and mizzen 26 ft, delivery (60 miles) included, all for less than 2.5K.
 
Ken- thats alot. Have you tried Collars? Your mast should be about £1200. If not I could do you a spruce one for about the same. Have to be Oct though....fully booked.
 
Have you tried looking at www.folkboats.co.uk - they might have a stock spruce mast at around Euro 1,500. I presume you are looking for around a 4" diameter mast, in which case I reckon you don't need a hollow mast; a solid could be cheaper as light and as strong.

The boom should be any easy DIY job and save you a bundle.
 
I don't think epoxy for glueing spars is a good idea. I think it is a little to brittle and if the spars bend a bit I think it will end up cracking.

The previous owner of my boat replaced the mast, boom and bow sprit which were epoxy glued when they started cracking after just 8 years service. The new ones are glued with resorcinol.
 
Depends how your spars are made. It is difficult to get the clamping pressures required for recorcinol in the birdsmouth process. If box or planked it would be ok for recorcinol. The guys who made that 157ft spruce spar used a version of urea formaldehyde as in the accelerated aging tests it came out best.
Also some epoxys are more flexible than others.
A
 
I'm inclined to agree; I have a 41ft gaff mainmast 7" diameter at the deck glued up solid from four baulks of clear spruce in the Seventies; it suffers recurrent glue line failures in high load areas (the heel, the point where the reefed gaff jaws come, etc.

But it has never yet been worth ripping the whole thing apart and starting again...
 
If it was glued up in the 70's the glue is most probably Areolite V, which fails after 30 years. Epoxy, if correctly mixed, correctly applied, under correct conditions, using the correct techniques, ie 'properly', will happily hold spars together, however much they bend. Aeroliite V becomes very brittle with age. Your spars would probably split very easily for reglueing, apart from the bits that have recently been reglued with epoxy.
Resorcinol is a proven and lasting glue, but needs high clamping pressures, and shows up the glue line. When you make a new hollow spar its glued up square so its easy to get those pressures on the join. When you reglue a hollow spar, you cannot clamp up to hard because you are putting pressure in the middle, not on the edges. This will flatten the section and cause the joint to open.
IMG_0193splitspar.jpg

IMG_0194Crampedup.jpg

IMG_0196finishedspar.jpg
 
If I'm not mistaken that is the mast out of 'Simon Bolivar'. I considered buying that boat, it lay at the brokers at Port Edgar for quite a while. Nick, thanks for the offer but I think the carriage would make it more economic to have one built locally if that's what I decide to do.
 
[ QUOTE ]
10 out of 10!
How did you know??

[/ QUOTE ]
Well it could have been that I recognised the distinctive grain pattern around the heel .......








Or just that the same picture is attributed on your own website /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
The cost excluding standing rigging but including all running rigging with a boom of some size was £10k. I went that way as the stick it replaced was aluminium. A wooden one would have taken much longer to make and I was too eager to get sailing so went for another aluminium job.
If going for a full recondition/renovation I might replace with wooden. But... I would need a serious think about that... and sufficient funds and time. The latter being important as I am not getting any younger and I have coasts to explore. I want to sail. Not maintain and rebuild beyond keeping her in good condition whilst doing so.
 
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