: Just curious as to why you are going with an aluminum mast when you could
: make one from solid wood, hollow-cored wood, glass-wrapped wood,
: carbon-fiber wrapped wood, or all carbon fiber (wrapped on a removable
: form). With any of these technologies you would have control over the
: diameter of the mast. You could certainly form connectors which would
: allow you to disassemble the mast into as many pieces as you wanted.

: Wouldn't a hollow wood mast--made from wood strips and covered with glass--be
: strong enough, and much less expensive than an aluminum mast?

: Just wondering.

: PGJ

Paul I once made a solid wooden mast made of laminated pieces of white pine using Weldwood contact cement. I carried around 120 sqft of sail and never had any separation or creep of the laminations after 10 years of sailing. Anyway, the aluminum mast is copied after Balogh’s. I did a rough pricing on this a few months ago and if I remember right it would be around $80. The 1 ½ in dia x 13 ft mast will consist of two five ft pieces and one three foot piece that will all slide together using two 3 ft smaller tubing epoxied half way inside the 1 ½ in tubes. Then they just stack together with gravity holding them together and the sail up hull and down hull locking them in place. Pieces will come all cut to length and all I have to do is epoxy the smaller tube inside the larger one. As I understand it I will have to sand the inside of the bigger tube and the outside of the smaller on and quickly epoxy them together before oxidation takes place. They can’t be riveted because the Sunfish sail rings I will be using might hang up. It is a close fit. The mast will break down into three pieces, 6 ½ ft, 5ft and 4 ft to store inside the kayak while I go from sailing to paddling. Using the aluminum is just so easy and quick over wood and the 1 ½ outside dia. must be exact for the sail slide rings to work ok. Now,I hope it all works.

John