More photos of Don Kurylko's new boat

[GWB]

Allrighty then...time for a bump!

Love how you have faired the rudder into the hull and the precision and care that have gone into every detail of the build. Inspiring. Thank you for sharing.

[filespace]

Wow... i have spent better half of the afternoon reading this entire thread while at work ...""working"" and loved every minute of it..cant wait to see photos of her in the water..

[Garret]

Wow... i have spent better half of the afternoon reading this entire thread while at work ...""working"" and loved every minute of it..cant wait to see photos of her in the water..

Pretty spectacular, eh?

So Don - more pics buried away somewhere? Please?

[chas]

More importantly, when's launch day? I had a mental note after reading this thread thinking that it would be this year, probably near Vancouver. ??? / Jim

[Don Kurylko]

I have to hang my head in shame for neglecting this thread for so long. I was kind of banking on Sophie to get things going again once she got back from her ice climbing trip this winter, but, alas, she never showed up. So I guess I have no excuses now and had better get my butt in gear and post some more photos. I’ll work on it over the weekend.

The plan is still to get the boat moved down to the coast this summer….well, sometime this year at any rate. We just have to get the house sold first and get rid of 99.99% of all our possessions – everything that won’t fit in the boat! This has proved far more difficult to do than I ever imagined. Who knew how attached we would become to all this stuff and our blissfully laid back lifestyle up here in beautiful Nelson, not to mention all of our friends.

The boat is now pretty much complete except for fitting the deck hardware, setting up the rigging and getting the sails made. That we will do once we get down to the coast. We expect to spend a bit of time on the hard at Shelter Point Marina in Richmond getting these things sorted out before launching and doing sea trials in preparation for some extended cruising next year. Actually, we are hoping to spend the winter over on Vancouver Island somewhere rather than within the confines of the Fraser River. Any suggestions where temporary liveaboards might be welcome over on the Island would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the bump and continuing interest in this project!

[Redeye]

ah, elimination of possessions... what a great task...

I've moved around the world (almost anti-podes) 3 times in the last 6 years and I've got my important belongings down to a little less than 1m^3 an 300 kg. Much of that is books and the weight of my cooking pans!

I find that as soon as you stop and settle, even for a year or two, things build up again.

We'll have another round of that game soon, I fear... (or rather look forward to it)

I wish you luck.

[Farfalla]

I have to hang my head in shame for neglecting this thread for so long. I was kind of banking on Sophie to get things going again once she got back from her ice climbing trip this winter, but, alas, she never showed up. So I guess I have no excuses now and had better get my butt in gear and post some more photos. I’ll work on it over the weekend.

The plan is still to get the boat moved down to the coast this summer….well, sometime this year at any rate. We just have to get the house sold first and get rid of 99.99% of all our possessions – everything that won’t fit in the boat! This has proved far more difficult to do than I ever imagined. Who knew how attached we would become to all this stuff and our blissfully laid back lifestyle up here in beautiful Nelson, not to mention all of our friends.

The boat is now pretty much complete except for fitting the deck hardware, setting up the rigging and getting the sails made. That we will do once we get down to the coast. We expect to spend a bit of time on the hard at Shelter Point Marina in Richmond getting these things sorted out before launching and doing sea trials in preparation for some extended cruising next year. Actually, we are hoping to spend the winter over on Vancouver Island somewhere rather than within the confines of the Fraser River. Any suggestions where temporary liveaboards might be welcome over on the Island would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the bump and continuing interest in this project!

And just how is this my fault Sir???
I am but a mere acolyte.

Sophie

[stuhaynes]

Wow... i have spent better half of the afternoon reading this entire thread while at work ...""working"" and loved every minute of it..cant wait to see photos of her in the water..

Thoroughly inspiring - I too have gone all the way through this entire thread. Amazing skill and patience of a saint! Bl**dy brilliant! Can't wait to see her in the water and under sail.

[Don Kurylko]

ah, elimination of possessions... what a great task...

I wish you luck.

Thanks Redeye, I'm going to need it!

[Don Kurylko]

And just how is this my fault Sir???
I am but a mere acolyte.

Sophie

No fault Sophie, just needing inspiration. Acolytes and Muses always welcome here!

[Don Kurylko]

Thoroughly inspiring - I too have gone all the way through this entire thread. Amazing skill and patience of a saint! Bl**dy brilliant! Can't wait to see her in the water and under sail.

Thanks Stu, I can't wait either! This will be our first ever experience living permanently aboard a boat. I'm not sure how that is going to go. You may find me come knocking on your hull for advice!

[Farfalla]

No fault Sophie, just needing inspiration. Acolytes and Muses always welcome here!

Ah so that's my job to just "muse" away here in the corner while waiting for some more pics, trying not to look bored or frustrated after months of deprivation. Not a job I'm very familiar with but I'll see if I can strike a suitable demeanour!

So we are going to jump from halfway through construction to launching or are we to get some of those archival shots after all?
Sounds like you are about to make a big move. Exciting!

have fun,
Sophie, a neophyte Muse

[Garret]

Are droolers OK too?

How's your project Sophie?

[John B]

I want to see Don's boat floating!. ( but I really wish you'd go belt and braces on the keel nuts... redundancy and all that. Go on Don.. do it , you know you want to. )

[chas]

"So we are going to jump from halfway through construction to launching or are we to get some of those archival shots after all?'

Don / Sophie always gets to the heart of the matter... but it would help to direct you regarding the live-aboard question if we knew what you set up for. Interior pics would work fine, or a systems description.

Seriously though, the live-aboard question around Vancouver Island is an ever-changing scenario; it gets easier the further north you travel. The best way to enjoy the experience IMHO is to remain independent. By this I mean you want to be at home while 'on the hook'. Winter scenarios where plug-in power and water are more readily available are hotly contested and appear to be limited in the Gulf islands, although if anyone can show otherwise tell us here first!!

The options improve immensely north of Courtney. / Jim

[Don Kurylko]

.... but I'll see if I can strike a suitable demeanour!

At a girl, I knew I could count on you!

[Don Kurylko]

I want to see Don's boat floating!. ( but I really wish you'd go belt and braces on the keel nuts... redundancy and all that. Go on Don.. do it , you know you want to. )

No worries John. I will be adding nuts and washers, but it's kind of fun freaking people out when they look into the bilge and I tell them they are unneccessary!

[Don Kurylko]

Thanks for the info Jim. It's good to get some idea of what I'm in for. It's been ages since I have been on the Island and I know the boating scene has changed considerably in the past few decades.

I will be posting interior shots soon. It will be interesting to see what all of you think of the layout. But first, I'll clear off some misc. stuff like spars and castings. Pics tomorrow or Tuesday for sure.

[Farfalla]

How's your project Sophie?

The project sadly went with it's owner when they were both shown the door recently!

The boat was welcome to stay, someone else wasn't!

If it's ever finished I can guarantee she will have a different name, Farfalla was my nickname!
So I am presently projectless, well at least with regards to building a boat. But I have plans to change that in the near future if things work out.

[Garret]

The project sadly went with it's owner when they were both shown the door recently!

The boat was welcome to stay, someone else wasn't!

If it's ever finished I can guarantee she will have a different name, Farfalla was my nickname!
So I am presently projectless, well at least with regards to building a boat. But I have plans to change that in the near future if things work out.

Bummer! Though sometimes that's the best thing for everyone & I hope things go well for you.

@ Don, re: keelbolts: Maybe - if they really are unnecessary - you could leave all the nuts loose so people will really freak out!

[potomac]

This is a really amazing thread. I find myself vacillating between "Oh, I could do that," and then several posts later, "Nope, no I couldn't." The deck alone- my God. What beauty. Every successive layer had me thinking, you are covering that up?

Don- It sounds as if you are getting close. Best of luck in the coming months. You have created a true inspiration. I am grateful for your efforts in sharing this stunning work.

[John B]

I elected not to add nuts and washers to the ends of the bolts either, preferring to let them ride freely without resisting any movement in the wooden keel. The nuts are totally redundant at any rate.

No worries John. I will be adding nuts and washers, but it's kind of fun freaking people out when they look into the bilge and I tell them they are unneccessary!

This was just sooo mischievous.

To be serious though, I know that epoxy encapsulated threads is a well known and tried method being used more and more especially by people building boats constructed in exotics....but its also responsible for some significant failures as well. The first that springs to mind being the forestay attachments for a class of 38 ft keel yachts here. The bolts were all in sheer but nevertheless , after a few had dropped their rigs the goodole throughbolt and nut suddenly became rediscovered as the latest best thing. So even when I use the method myself,tlast year I added a couple of turning blocks right aft where I couldn't bolt through ( with the bolts in sheer) by this method, I tend to query important things done this way . 'specially if it holds a keel on or a rig up.

I feel so good now . Floating photos next eh?

[Don Kurylko]

Okay, I’ll come clean John. I’m convinced that the nuts and washers are redundant for the reasons stated above, but I will add them simply because it really does freak people out – insurance companies notwithstanding. However, I will fit them over a thick neoprene gasket and only snug the nuts down lightly. I do feel that taking them up hard can cause problems when the wooden keel swells up and the nuts can then act as jacks and possibly cause the Epoxy to rupture under stress. With “loose” nuts, the bolts can still ride unconstrained and the epoxy and wood can shrink and swell slowly in harmony with each other, kind of like an accordion bellows. The nuts will be there only as a fail safe incase something catastrophic happens. At least that way, the keel won't drop off entirely.

[Don Kurylko]

The time had finally come to build the spars. Naturally, one would think that starting with something small and easy, like the gaff boom, would be the logical thing to do, but…no, not me. Too easy, I thought, let’s go big and do the mast first!

A few years earlier, I had bought some nice clear Douglas fir from a small local mill that had procured some clear tight grained old growth timber from up around the Revelstoke area. It was really beautiful stuff. The boards ranged from 20 to 30 feet in length, but were quite narrow and had the odd knot here and there. I’m not quite sure what their definition of clear was, but there was plenty of stock to work with anyway.

A few of the last pieces can be seen lying under the port side of the hull. To the left of that I set up a rudimentary spar bench and set about milling the staves for a 7” diameter, hollow “bird mouth” mast 37’ long.



My set up was pretty primitive, but functional, and it wasn’t too long before I had all the staves cut and ready to go.



A rabbet plane was handy for cleaning up the saw cut grooves.



Working alone, it was impossible for me to even contemplate trying to glue up the entire spar in one go. Instead, I set up half moulds and glued it up one stave at a time, doing the scarphs on the run as I went. It wasn’t too difficult to do.



Off cuts from the milled staves were used as pads to hold the clamps in place.



The actual moulds were set quite far apart. This worked fine and the staves simply aligned themselves for the most part, with a few clamps in between to hold things in place until the glue set.

It’s good to have friends with clamps to borrow from!

[Don Kurylko]

Once both halves of the spar were laminated, I set about making the backing blocks and load bearing cores for the mast. This is a shot of the masthead.



This is the bottom. The core, in this case, extends up from the heel to a foot or so above the mast band/goose neck area. All the blocking has limber holes through it and the longer pieces were relieved at the ends to eliminate hard spots and reduce stress under load.



Just before gluing the two halves together, I applied three coats of Epoxy resin to seal the wood and then packed all the hollow areas with crumpled aluminium foil. The idea was to create a giant radar reflector. Of course, a few months later, along comes Paladin with a thread on the Forum explaining to us how it should really be done. Bloody hell!



All glued up and ready to fair.



A simple jig to knock off the extended edges and create a nice smooth octagon.



A simple device to mark off the lines for taking down the edges further.

[Don Kurylko]

And another jig for knocking those edges off.





Quick and dirty, but effective.



But the final fairing was done with a hand plane to get the surface as smooth and round as possible before moving on to…



“El Monstro”!

I six-sided a section of an old wooden rolling pin, screwed on some curved pieces and bolted on a length of 1/2" ready rod,



then screwed a piece of mountain bike tire around it, added a PVC pipe for a handle and chucked the whole thing into an electric drill.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo of it in action. It works by placing an inverted sanding belt over the spar and over the bike tire and then spinning it with the drill. It’s crude, but it works. The curved surface of the tire keeps the belt from sliding off and gives a surprising amount of control over it. You do have to be careful not to over-twist the belt to avoid gouging the wood, but the technique is easily mastered. It will test your ability to concentrate though!

[Don Kurylko]

The lower end of the spar was left 8 sided to just above deck level.



And flat on opposite sides, port and starboard, at the hounds to take the trestle knees.



All else was rounded.



I started with a 60 grit belt to knock down the high spots and switched to 100 grit to smooth down the grooves.



Then finished by hand sanding fore and aft to remove any remaining scratches.

It is impossible to get a perfectly round spar with this method, but certainly close enough to fool the eye. You do have to be careful though, otherwise you could end up with a spar that "looks like a snake that swallowed a bunch of oranges" if you screw up, as Jay Greer once so graphically put it in another thread.



This was fun - cutting the heel tennon so that it would mate accurately with the mortice in the mast step. Gut churning stuff, let me tell you!

[Don Kurylko]

Sawing into a newly built spar is definitely not for the faint hearted.



Or whacking away at it with a chisel.



Noice....



Whew!



Epoxy sealed and varnished, with a nice little screen over the limber hole to keep bugs out, let moisture drain and allow the spar to breathe in order to equalize air pressure inside and out.



Before I built the mast, I made up a couple of 3” sections out of Sitka spruce and fir. The one on the left is fir and is splined, as advocated by John Guzzwell in his book on boat building. The one on the right is bird mouth. At this point I wasn’t sure which construction method I would use. But I finally settled on bird mouth. It seemed the simplest and had the added advantage of being interlocking and self-aligning in the bargain.

I had Sanda weigh these sections on a very accurate Postal scale and they came out at 15 oz (430g) for the spruce and 19.8 oz (560g) for the fir (about 30% heavier). As it turned out, the mast weighed in at very close to 200 lbs (91kg) on a bathroom scale, less finish and fittings. I will weigh it again later when it’s rigged and ready to step to see what it finally comes out at. I’m pretty happy with it so far though.

[PeterSibley]

That is such good looking fir!! Pretty excellent mast too!

[purri]

Ah yes, the limber hole, something that others forget at their peril. Exquisite work mister K!

[Farfalla]

Looks good Don!
All that Vertical grain Fir looks good, we call it Oregon here but that's an old story.


I never would've guessed I was so good at this muse job

[svaap]

The level of skill at display here is simply excellent!!!

[Lew Barrett]

Inspiring! The sticky is missing here.

[WX]

“El Monstro”!

I six-sided a section of an old wooden rolling pin, screwed on some curved pieces and bolted on a length of 1/2" ready rod,



then screwed a piece of mountain bike tire around it, added a PVC pipe for a handle and chucked the whole thing into an electric drill.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo of it in action. It works by placing an inverted sanding belt over the spar and over the bike tire and then spinning it with the drill. It’s crude, but it works. The curved surface of the tire keeps the belt from sliding off and gives a surprising amount of control over it. You do have to be careful not to over-twist the belt to avoid gouging the wood, but the technique is easily mastered. It will test your ability to concentrate though!

Yours is a lot fancier than mine was but it's a great way to get a spar nice and smooth.

[Redeye]

Don, that's one of the best birdsmouth write-ups I've seen. And your Fir is GREAT looking stuff. Every time I see a spar build I take careful notes so that when I finally go to build mine I have the collective wisdom of every spar builder on this forum to fall back upon.
I like your little jigs to make a nice even octagon and hexadecagon shape to round from.

For my last spar (2.5 " ø) I used a piece of PVC pipe split down the middle and only sanded along the grain, 80 grit, 120 grit, 180 grit, 360 grit. It was a great way to get very round, but it was time consuming - OK for a small spar.

[richbeck]

Very nice work and excellently written. I really enjoyed the problem solving tools and jigs. Gives me additional tools in my bag for when I build mine. Thanks for sharing http://northseabuilder2.blogspot.com/

Richard

[chill]

Your spar sander is a stoke of genius

[Don Kurylko]

Thanks for the kind comments everyone. I’m especially pleased to read that some of you can actually make use of some of this stuff.

Peter, Sophie and Redeye...the fir used for the mast was definitely wonderful! I know there is some issue in another thread about the number of rings per inch desirable or even necessary in a piece of fir, but I can certainly vouch for the great pleasure I had in working with this tight grained wood and the very pleasing effect it has on the eye in the finished spar. 8 rpi just doesn’t cut it by comparison.

I was also fortunate to come across some very nice VG Sitka Spruce for some of the other spars. It just so happened that a local fellow was producing wooden components for homebuilt airplanes in a small village just up the road from Nelson. He scoured the West Coast for just the right trees and had them cut to his specifications and sent up to the Kootenay’s at great trouble and expense. The stuff was truly lovely to behold – tight grained and almost perfectly clear - but in all, he could only use about 20% of it because of the stringent regulations governing grain run out and other “flaws” occurring in the planks for aircraft construction. Unlucky for him, but lucky for me, I had the pick of some remarkable “reject” Spruce, that almost gave new meaning the term “spar grade”.

Chill...I wish I could claim genius status for the spar sanding device, but it and its variants have been around for a long time. Credit is due the many other boat builders who have developed and refined it over the years. I am particularly indebted to Stephen, the forumite rebuilding the pilot cutter Carlotta, for suggesting the use of a curved spindle and the mountain bike tire to increase traction and control. It made all the difference. I was having a devil of a time trying to make it work before that.




The rest of the spars were glued up into balks and shaped in the conventional manner. I did not feel that I had much to gain by using bird’s mouth construction on these. The weight saving was not of any great significance and they were a lot easier to build this way, considering that these spars were tapered and not of constant diameter. The topmast, gaff boom and bowsprit are Sitka Spruce and I did hollow out their centers with a half round router bit and filled them with crumpled foil. This is the gaff boom.




There is definitely something pleasurable about shaping spars by hand with sharp tools.




This is the top mast, with limbers routed out through the solid sections.




I left the heel of the topmast square where it sits in the trestles.





Most topmasts require a fid of some sort to hold the spar in place and it is often just a simple wedge-shaped piece of hardwood that it is put in or removed by sending someone aloft to do so. However, this can be a problem if it needs to be done in a seaway and many different methods and devices have been contrived in the past to avoid the need for this.

One such device was a metal tumbler, counterweighted to take advantage of gravity. In the closed position (above), it could be raised and lowered at will without hanging up on the trestles.




In the open position, it would lock down on the trestles and hold the spar in place. To lower the topmast, it was only necessary to raise it a few inches with the heel rope, allowing gravity to tumble the fid and get it out of the way.

To set the spar into position however, a trip line was needed to open it up again once it had passed through the trestles, as shown above. This line only needed to be long enough to hang freely below the heel of the top mast in a short loop, through which a longer line was passed when raising the spar and then pulled back out once it was set.

I don’t know who invented this device, but it seemed very clever to me - elegant in its simplicity. I doubt I will ever really use it at sea as intended, but I couldn’t resist trying it out anyway. It was one of those interesting little side projects that was fun to do.

[Don Kurylko]

The trestle, or cap arrangement, that fits around the mast at the hounds and houses the heel of the topmast.




The only spar that wasn’t laminated up is the main boom. I had a lovely piece of Vancouver Island Douglas fir kicking around that was just the right size for the job. It was originally intended to be part of the keel for a William Atkin cutter, Ben Bow, which I was going to build, but abandoned in favour of this boat.




In a past issue of Classic Boat, Mike Burn had an interesting article on an alternate reefing arrangement for his 26’ Albert Strange gaff yawl “Sheila”. I was quite taken by what he wrote and decided to give it a try. Basically, rather than having the usual reefing combs on either side of the boom, the reefing lines are lead through holes drilled through the spar at a 45 degree angle.




These holes exit into a trough cut into the underside of the boom. 1/2" bronze pins are fitted where the lines make the turn into the trough to prevent wear on the spar. The lines are then run forward to cleats near the gooseneck.




Here’s a drawing of the basic arrangement described in the article.




And a close up of the pin placement.

I am a little concerned about the reefing pendants chafing on the pins and intend to use a highly abrasion resistant line like Vectran V-100, which can tolerate extreme loads around a very tight radius, to counter this.

[Farfalla]

Hi Don,
As usual really interesting work. These 2 pictures made me stop and think.
This is such an elegant solution.
A lot of the older boats here have pole masts rather than a removable topmast just because of the hassle of removing it.






This is the first time I have seen this part made out of wood, the regular metal one must be a fair bit heavier and require a whole lot more complex construction if you are not a metal worker. So this actually sits down on the hounds?



You obviously have a lot of fun with some of this stuff.

Thanks for the pictures.

Sophie

[PeterSibley]

In a past issue of Classic Boat, Mike Burn had an interesting article on an alternate reefing arrangement for his 26’ Albert Strange gaff yawl “Sheila”. I was quite taken by what he wrote and decided to give it a try. Basically, rather than having the usual reefing combs on either side of the boom, the reefing lines are lead through holes drilled through the spar at a 45 degree angle.

These holes exit into a trough cut into the underside of the boom. 1/2" bronze pins are fitted where the lines make the turn into the trough to prevent wear on the spar. The lines are then run forward to cleats near the gooseneck.




Here’s a drawing of the basic arrangement described in the article.




And a close up of the pin placement.

I am a little concerned about the reefing pendants chafing on the pins and intend to use a highly abrasion resistant line like Vectran V-100, which can tolerate extreme loads around a very tight radius, to counter this.

Why are the holes at 45 degrees rather than 90 degrees Don ?

[Farfalla]

Why are the holes at 45 degrees rather than 90 degrees Don ?

Hi Peter,
I would assume that the holes are at 45 deg. so that you get tension, pulling them around 90 bend is less likely to stretch the sail taut.

[PeterSibley]

I wonder if there is a tackle as well?

[Figment]

I wonder if there is a tackle as well?

More than the 2:1 (less a good deal of friction, yes) made by the reefing line made fast round the boom, then up through the grommet before being run into the hole in the boom?

[PeterSibley]

Yes, I can see a LOT of friction.

[Don Kurylko]

Peter and Figment… this drawing may help clarify the pendant leads. The line is attached to the reefing clew of the sail only. It is not attached to the aft part of the boom in any other way. It’s exactly like an outhaul line, but led around a pin instead of a sheave.




Like this.




Close up of the pin. It is painted white at the moment, but that will get scoured off in time. It was just easier to paint everything in one go without bothering to mask off.




Reefing line turned around the pin.




And led forward along the trough to cleats near the gooseneck. There will be brass strips attached to the bottom of the boom at regular intervals to keep the lines from sagging out.

According to the article by Mike Burn (Classic Boat, August 1997, page 72) no tackles are required and friction is minimal compared to the common 2:1 slab reefing arrangement see on most traditional boats. As long as the mainsheet is eased sufficiently to spill the wind out of the sail, he claims it is quick and easy to haul in and cleat the pendant without the need of winches or tackles. So quick, in fact, that a reef can be pulled down in less than a minute. A bit of hyperbole perhaps, but it seems feasible. The system is supposed to be workable for mainsails up to about 500 sq ft in size. We'll see.

Sophie…I’ll take and post a photo of the trestles and hounds tomorrow. It’s dark o’ night at the moment.

[PeterSibley]

Don , I think everyone will be very interested in how this system works . A thread of it's own will certainly be warranted ,

Peter

[Don Kurylko]

Peter...I will definitely post more photos and commentary on it once we get down to the coast and get the boat rigged and sails bent on. I'm just as curious. Although, none of this is really that novel. I've seen similar internal, in-boom reefing systems on modern racing boats, with very neat built in cam cleats, etc. We're just a few centuries behind, that's all!

[PeterSibley]

. We're just a few centuries behind, that's all!

Ain't it grand !

[Don Kurylko]

Here you go Sophie…the masthead and hounds. Unfortunately I don’t have any detailed construction photos of it. I must have been slacking off at the time.




Pretty standard kind of arrangement borrowed directly from Leather, Kunhardt and Kemp. I think I made the trestles and bolsters a bit more clunky than necessary though. The knees are D. fir sandwich lamination, fastened and glued to the spar. All sealed with Epoxy resin and painted.

The spreader studs are tapped into the metal plate and Epoxy cast deep into into the trestles. The plate takes the wear from the fid when seated and distributes the load from the forestaysail halyard block eye bolts – the holes to port and starboard.

The rectangular hole for the topmast heel is lined with leather to minimize wear on the spar. Leather is also glued around the mainmast above the bolsters to take the wear from the shrouds and backstays. Traditionally, wood or metal chafe strips are screwed in place here for protection, but I will be using Dynex Dux synthetic rope instead of wire and figured there was no need for such aggressive measures. Dynex is much softer than wire and conforms more readily around supporting surfaces without digging into them. The Dynex line will be further protected with Dyneema covers in place of the usual sewn leathers.




The two bands at the upper end of the masthead are the attachment points for the peak halyard blocks. There is an eye in each one on the opposite side. The spar is slightly stepped below each band to keep it from sliding down. The bands are Epoxy cast in place and there are also a couple of machine screws tapped into each one and glued into the mast to prevent them from twisting under load.




I must confess that those Epoxy coated rounded edges do give the components a rather plastic look. I’m not sure I like it all that much, but that’s the trade off for keeping the finish from wearing off sharp corners prematurely. All the inside corners are slightly filleted as well for good measure.




Masthead cap and ring for the topmast. This was cast in manganese bronze from a single pattern. The ring is also lined with glued on leather. I don’t have much faith that it will stick to metal as well as it does to wood though. Just a bit of an experiment on my part. We’ll see what happens.

The pin through the cap, with the masking tape around the ends, supports the jib halyard blocks (port and starboard) and the spreader lifts.




The throat halyard crane. It has two legs that extend into the mast and is also Epoxy cast in place.