Making your own mast hoops

[Nicholas Carey]

Same guy as earlier has this little design for a jig for making epoxy laminate mast hoops.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mrwizard/wkshps/shpnotes/hoops01.pdf

I like it. The jig is made from HDPE so epoxy won't stick to it.

[Bob Cleek]

Cute, but it sure seems like overkill. What's wrong with gluing them up around a piece of PVC pipe wrapped in Saran wrap? LOL

[Syd MacDonald]

Cut a hole in a piece of plywood sized to the outside diameter of your hoop with a notch for the tip of a pair of vice grips. Steam the wood and wind it into the hole, grab it with your vicegrips to remove it from the form and rivet it. I saw it done at the Fisheries Museum in Lunenberg in Nova Scotia by boat builder Cliff Swicker.

[John Bertenshaw]

Its a nice jig but really when you're on a job , you're on a job. Making hoops you want to wind up 5 or 8 at a time or at least , thats what I did.

I used pvc pipe with some thin battens on the outside to pack up to the required diameter, then the plastic wrap as Bob says.
One thing I found handy ( I used a proprietry furniture timber edging veneer) was to use a plastic fir tree fastener through the first inch of the strip to give me something to haul against and compress the veneers against. When the hoops all dried I just knifed the fastener so they could be knocked off the form.The plastic head ( flat)stayed lost in the hoop.

Even have a pic. , surprise. I made a wire hook tied to a concrete block to pull on some compression while I was cleaning up the excess before putting in a holding screw.( not clamp.. I think I used a screw so I had clean faces to get around for the cleanup now that I think about it.)
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid167/pd2a6a3b558aa2f2086872e3ef13ea70e/f43baf7a.jpg
I forgot about that first hoop.LOL. a nice long scarf/ feather for the start was important.