MAst

[ryansemail707]

My friend and me have built a 10' sailboat out of wood. it is quite heavy already and we havent yet attached the mast. Does anyone have any suggestions on what to make the mast out of. It would be great if it was cheap and lightwieght.

[PsiPhi]

Something Light!
No I'm not being funny - there were 660 unread posts when I logged in this morning. I thought if I added a comment the thread would look busy and someone who knows the answer will come along and enlighten us both.

Some people suggest aluminium alloy poles? - don't know where you're supposed to get them from though.
Saw an interesting artical on making a (hollow) wooden mast "birds-mouth" style.

[ryansemail707]

hahaha Thanks man. Yeah i have heard some stuff about alumimun poles to. but i am not sure how much they are going to cost.

[USCGRET/E8]

You may be able to get a round stair case railing at Lowes or HD fairly cheap;

[ryansemail707]

Thank you that is a good idea. I am going to look into that

[Pete Dennison]

Why don't you visit your nearest Yacht Club - they might have a few old masts off some dinghies lying around.

[ryansemail707]

yeah i will look around. But i am not sure there are any yacht clubs within an hour of me. The closest is probably at ocean city new jersey.

[Flumixt]

>You may be able to get a round stair case railing at Lowes or HD fairly cheap<

I'll 2nd that. Made a 2 masted sail canoe rig that way. 17 foot canoe, 8 foot masts. Same stuff for the booms. 2 foot long PVC pipes for mast steps so no stays.

[PAR]

Typical stair hand rails are flat on one side, cove sided and rounded on top, plus they are hardwood (or dense softwood, like SYP), quite flexible and heavy. If you're heavy now, you don't want weight up in the rig, so hollow is the way to go.

Aluminum poles can be found in the phone book. Check with awning builders or any other business that may have a need for aluminum tubing, like custom gate/fence builders, for example. Scrap metal salvage yards also could be a good source for a section of tubing. Every major city has one or more of these types of businesses.

A wooden box section mast is very easy to build, stiff, strong and reasonably light. Birdsmouth is more difficult to build, but makes a round or oval mast.

[Flumixt]

I just went out and performed a rigorous investigation of one of my rail masts. :-)

Fir. Doug Fir. It was 1 5/8 dia. with a circular cross section except it was flattened. The flat was 15/16 wide. The short dia at the flat was 1 1/2 inch. They nicked off 1/8 inch making the flat. It was 9'1" long. It weighed 2.75 pounds. So a 15 foot mast would weigh 4.6 pounds. Adding a 6 foot boom brings the total to 6.4 pounds - hardly XSive. Not only that they would float in case of an upset. Not only that; for fabrication merely cut it off to desired length and you got it.

To accurately weigh this light object I layed it on one end of a balance beam and balanced it up with a known weight, measured the distances etc.

[lewisboats]

I just came back from a weekend of sailing in relatively light winds (8-15 mph)...I hung 60 sq ft on a 10 ft untapered DF stair rail. It was a fairly high peaked Sprit sail with a sprit boom. The mast was simply too bendy, tho it didn't crack I thought it might a few times when wind and waves made it whip and bend like a piece of grass. You probably want something stiffer. I'll add a picture of it sailing when I get them (from Bob (in the picture)...who won't be home to send them for a few days).

Steve

[Halcyon]

One option may be to look on Army surplus and use the Camo-net support tubes. They are usualy going cheap.

[LP]

Here is a whole rig.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Sailboat-boom-mast-sail-rudder-cb-fits-Snark-sail-boat_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQcategoryZ31281QQihZ014QQitemZ330151742984QQrdZ1QQsspagenameZWDVW

Maybe you can find something closer to your local.

[eponodyne]

One option may be to look on Army surplus and use the Camo-net support tubes. They are usualy going cheap.That just gave me a flashback to Korea, 1988 Operation Team Spirit, moving the blessed Tactical Ops Center vehicles every three hours. I hated those camo nets. But the tubes are indeed quite light, quite stiff and quite strong.

[Raggi_Thor]

10 feet llong boat?
Wood is probably light enough, and cheap.
Hollow wood is more work, but lighter.
And of curse an aluminium tube, maybe half a kg per meter?

An old mast is of course the easiest solution :)