Delaminations in masts

[Chris Burns]

Having finished the booms,turned my attention to the masts.Main is 30 ft. mizzen is 25 ft. of hollow oval section spruce. Previous owner scraped off varnish and wrapped in plastic. To My shame, I didn't unwrap them quick enough-have some partial delaminations of the component staves. Have been considering how to remedy situation. I am considering drilling medium hole in mast, hooking up LARGE shop-vac and applying West brand wonderstuff to openings and sucking it in. Any comments/suggestions would be welcome.

[Ian McColgin]

I'd do it a bit differently.

When I did Goblin's masts and what I'll do with Il Pipi's mast:

Begin spreading the cracks a bit to find how far they naturally run. Really low angle thin hardwood wedges are a nice way to do this. As you see the natural end, you might well drill a small hole in the seam a few inches out. Carefull continue the split up to that hole which will act as a natural stopper and can be easily plugged later.

Clean the edges. This can be done with something like a hacksaw blade or with a very thin nail file.

Ease some epoxy in - I don't ususally thicken it for this sort of repair - with a syringe and tighten her up. For this, it's hard to beat strips of innertube wrapped around as sort of circular clamps. Remember to put wax paper or something around first if you don't want to glue the rubber to the wood.

You may have places requiring a repair by dutchman as well.
G'luck

[Bob Cleek]

Ian's right... that's the way to do it. "Leap frog" your wedges as you run up the crack and don't bang them in too hard... You may expect to find that the crack that's obvious is only the tip of the iceberg. You may find the whole thing opening up on you. If so, no problem, just be glad it happened all at once. Nothing's worse than chasing a crack over and over again as it travels up the stick.

[Ian McColgin]

Just bringing Chris's questions together.