Hi all
just a couple more pics of where I'm up to....waiting on my trailer (still! my builder is taking his time...) at the moment. When that arrives it will open the door for a big push to the launch ramp! Can't wait!
Here's a couple of images just to make me think it's actually getting there.Â
cheers
Gerrard
Looks great! How are things going below ?
The mast looks interesting, is that you idea, or did you see it somewhere before?
Wonderful looking boat! Looking forward to more photos!
Yes the mast is a hollowed out job to save a bit of weight and I have used different timber species to box in the sections you can see - that's what I had. Will see how it works out - ok I hope!
I'm just starting a new build and it will have a 15' gaffer mast. I'll use a seemingly unique method, but it's actually an old way to build masts. The mast is built as a box, with overlapping sides (dashed gray lines). Since it's an unstayed gaffer, it needs to be stiff, yet bendy too. On the inside corners a triangular wedge of Douglas fir is used to reinforce the stick. The mast will also have hard points (swallowtails) internally at the heel, gooseneck reef and full hoist locations, so the mast (column) can't collapse under heavy load.
The drawing should be self explanatory. I'll cut each stave (mast side) the same, then glue two sides together. Next I'll glue in the Douglas fir corner braces, followed by half of each swallowtail. Once the inside is built up (that's what they use to call this type of mast), the two halves will be glued together and the whole thing 8 sided, 16 sided then rounded out on a big, slow turning (50 RPM) lathe.
This is an old school way of building a light, yet very strong and stiff mast. This mast is about 15' 8" from heel to head and will weigh about 17 pounds, including the 5/8" stainless sail track, halyards and topping lift and their blocks installed. To save weight the blocks will be stropped to the mast instead of using eye straps or tangs. The lift will be 1/8", while the two halyards will be 1/4". 6 Ronstan 30 series blocks will be attached to this mast. It'll be finished bright with a white masthead.
The gaff is also going to be hollow, though the boom will be solid, it doesn't need to be, because on this boat, a vang is possible, so you don't need a heavy boom to hold the sail down in off wind situations.
The other drawing is a "foreshortened" drawing of the mast (4:1). This simply means the mast's length is shortened to 4 times the ratio as the width. We do this so you can see the curves more easily, but more importantly, so you don't need to use a huge piece of paper to print at a reasonable scale.
As you can see the mast is shaped like a column and not straight sided, like many seem to draw in modern times. The lower portion of the mast is tapered to save weight, below the deck partners and the upper sections are tapered for the same reason, but more gradually, to maintain stiffness. The top of this drawing shows the curved mast sides, while the bottom drawing shows the difference between the curved (red dashed line) and simple straight sided mast (continuous taper). You can see this curved tapering leaves more meat along the length of the luff, so it's stiff and then dramatically curves toward the masthead to save weight. This also would be typical for a gaffer mast. In fact this one is a little overly thick in it's upper sections, but this is because it's a free standing mast. If it had shrouds, they tapering would occur sooner and further down the mast.
Food for though for those looking to build a mast that's light and strong. This particular mast as a 22% wall thickness, but if it was stayed (like that on a Weekender) you could easily go down to 17% will few difficulties. A Weekender mast built like this would weight about the same (16 - 17 pounds), assuming the same species and hardware. Lastly, this mast being keel stepped, free standing and easily removed (lifted out of it's hole) it's full rotating, which slightly improves sailing abilities.
Before the obvious questions, the build is an enlarged Mellon Seed, loosely based on the "Cortez" Mellon Seed. The New Yorker, I'm build it for sent me the plans, but I was so unimpressed that I redrew them, so now I'm calling it the Cortez X Mellon Seed.