Finishing up the masts

The masts were nearly completed last fall. They were painted and working sail halyards were installed. Here you can see the main mast folded down.

 I set both masts up to check their fit and alignment before bringing them back in to install sail tracks, snotter attachment straps, cleats, staysail. and spinnaker blocks.

The best way to attach the sail track to the aluminum sections is to use blind rivets. They should be stainless rivets with stainless ferrules.

I put a dab of sealant on each rivet to seal the mast and help prevent corrosion. The hand riveter pulls on the ferrule swelling the rivet inside the mast until the ferrule breaks off.

The stainless ferrules require more force than a standard pop rivet. I broke one of my riveters.

The upper 1/3 of both the mizzen and main mast are made of wood. Rivets will not work. Screws are the best fastner. The wood is only about 7/16 of an inch thick. Holes could be predrilled and the screws run directly into the wood or the screws could be dipped in a little epoxy to help keep out water. I like the idea of drilling an oversize hole filling it with epoxy and then redrilling a smaller hole for the fastner. This results in the fastner going into a solid well of epoxy. This doesn't leave much of any place for water to enter. It is also a lot of extra work.

 This is a section of the upper mast with the oversize holes drilled and filled with epoxy.

The holes must be very accurately placed. With a thin walled hollowed mast they can not be too deep or the epoxy will be filling up the mast instead of the screw hole.

A piece of dowel drilled out and slipped over the bit allows me to precisely control the hole depth. The spar tapers but wall thickness remains constant until the last few feet when the wall thins out a little. I first drilled each hole with a small diameter bit so if I broke through I could more easily plug the hole with a little dab of thickened epoxy.

I wanted to get a one piece sail track. I had a few leads but was never able to get some track in the 20 foot plus length I would need. Defender had 12 foot lengths and that is what I went for. Joints in the sections can cause the slides to bind making it difficult to raise or lower the sail. I also thought the one piece track would  help contribute to my lightning system. I considered having the sections welded but.... I settled for filing a little mortice and tenon. I think this helped insure track alignment.

You can see the screws attaching the track in the upper wooden section of the mast.

In addition to sail tracks the masts need eye straps for the snotter blocks and the mizzen needs several cleats. This hardware I attached when possible to a place where the aluminum tubing was doubled because of a sleeve or a joint. I used a tap to cut threads into the aluminum and used stainless machine screws to secure the hardware.

The main and mizzen halyard blocks were attached last fall. I decided to go ahead and add the blocks for the spinnaker and staysail.

The simplest strongest way to secure a piece of hardware is to through bolt it. That could make for a lot of bolts going through the top of the mast. I decide to use the bolt cast in epoxy method. These blocks are under a lot of load. We shall see what happens when they are put to the test.

I don't know if you can see the pink bathroom scale, but according to it the mizzen weighs 23.5 pounds. The main weighs 28.5 pounds. They say an ounce of weight at the top of the mast is worth many pounds down on the deck so I have worked to keep the spars as light as possible. The main rests in a tabernacle which makes raising and lowering easier. The mizzen though is stepped freehand. Tricky.

Spars are done now I need a tiller.

This is a piece of white oak I cut on our land in Virginia. It has some curve to it which I thought would match the curve of the tiller.