The Masts are down! Napa Valley Marina - Napa California. I made it up the Napa river without running aground riding a 5 knot flood tide. The masts, booms, and bowsprit are now sitting in the yard.…

[Hans Petrie]

The Masts are down! Napa Valley Marina - Napa California.  I made it up the Napa river without running aground riding a 5 knot flood tide.  The masts, booms, and bowsprit are now sitting in the yard.  Removing them was easy enough since they had a manbasket to remove the triadic stay.  It is a simple matter of removing all the turnbuckles and plucking them from the boat with a crane.

 

From what I can see the main mast front board has a seem where it has begun to separate all down the length of the mast.  The mast is basically splitting apart at the seem.  It should (I hope) be a matter of removing that board and expoxying it back using a lot of clamps that I will probably make using scrap wood and threaded rod.

 

The mizzen is another matter.  I can't seem to find any spruce.  Redwood, cedar, and fir seem to to my options if I need new would.  My mizzen repair of seven years ago, while still holding strong needs to be redone.  It seems that moisture got inside at some point and swelled up the mast core I installed and there is a split in one of the original spruce boards.

 

The bowsprit is in pretty good shape.  Just needs some filling here and there and paint.  So today - all the hardware comes off, with extensive notes on where to put it back.

[Hans Petrie]

The main mast frontboard popped off with only minor sawing in 2 spots to "get the seam" to rip vs. splitting the boards.  The basic paln worked.  Pop off one of the sides using chisels and inspect the mast.  The main is looking good.  Minor rot int he masthead which is totally dried out right now but I can see the telltale signs.  Mold spores.  Soft exterior.  Slightly shrunk.  But not by any means the spongeous mass I;m used to as "rot".  I'm thinking it may be recoverable using ethylene gylcol and possibly some penetrating epoxy...  Very small area but it is the masthead which is vastly complex and also very important...  Decisions have yet to be made.  The mizzen also is all apart.  Now it comes to it.  The mizzen appears to be made entirely of Doug Fir.  The main, however, is spruce and amzingly even more - has no scarf joints.  Somehow the main on this boat was made of single lengths of spruce.  This is bizzare.  But I can find no evidence of scarf joints anywhere.

[Hans Petrie]

The "Information from Clyde" article is infinitely useful.  I can see now how it all fits together.  Thanks!

[bob mitchell]

   In the Blog "INFORMATION FROM CLYDE"  Clyde actually wrote an essay on building a Newporter mast. I would definitely say you would enjoy it, and it might give you further insight.

[Hans Petrie]

Wow!  Ok.  So instead of using a router and wasting a lot of expensive spruce he just used the 1/4" plywood. Fascinating.  This is starting to make sense.  I will be sure to grind/sand it all out smooth and easy.  It is rather ingenious once I get inside the head space of it.

[bob mitchell]

HAH - thats great! AND - the internal plywood is original - thats the way Ack made a rabbet - he just glued 1/4" plywood in place. - pretty effective.  Be sure to clean all the old glue off - that might have been one of the problems with peole trying to reglue.

[Hans Petrie]

OK, so great thoughts and possibly usable for the main.  However, the original plan did work.  I was able to "pop" the front board from the mast using a pair of chisels and driving them down the length, starting at the "base" or foot of the mast.  Going slow and easy on each side and driving the chisels downward it slowly applied pressure to the seam and popped it off without splitting the wood.  The wood splitting I did run into was actually at a scarf join that had separated and the wood didn't split at all!!!  This was fortunate.   And the mizzen is actually totally dry and wonderful inside.  My heart is a thousand pounds lighter.  I can see that it has been epoxied heavily by previous owners and has a lot of internal modifications but essentially it is very sound and workable.  So, once again.  Just started at the base and ran a pair of chisels down each side slowly tap tap tapping my way with hammer and waiting for the "splitting" sound and it seemed to go great along the seem.  The only problem areas where epoxy had been used in the past and I had to "sawzall" and hand saw through them without issue.  There was only one spot.  Lots of wierd nails used though and some strange 1/4" plywood used also on the internal box which I know cannot be original.  But again.  No rot.  No moisture.  No worries!  This is going well.

[bob mitchell]

       A skill saw with a carbide tip, the depth set correctly, AND A GUIDE THAT RIDES THE SIDE, would really work well.  When you glue it back together maybe use an 1/8" spline or shim. But the important part is the saw guide to keep the blade running down the seam. If the guide runs on the outside of the board, mounted on the saw, it will probably consistent. If you tack a guide on the mast itself you might need to take careful measurements to place the guide in case the mast tapers or varies in distance to the seam.

[Hans Petrie]

I have started to remove the frontal boards of the mizzen box since the mizzen is in the worst shape I figure I'll take my learnings here.  If I it becomes totally FUBAR it isn't the end of the world compared to the main.  I tried popping off the front board where it was separating using chisels to widen the "groove" and it was going swimmingly for awhile but then the glue started holding and the board itself started to split.   ARGH!  So then I started using a handsaw and hacksaw in the "slot" between the front board and the rest of the mast to guide it.  Now I'm thinking of using the sawzawl to just rip that front board off at the seam where it attaches.  There is a lot of epoxy and repairs from previous owners and I wouldn't discount a screw or two even though I removed all the hardware I know about.  There is a nice split on the front board that has been there since I bought the boat.  I just need to go for it.

 

Courage.  Deep Breath.  One, Two...  Break.

 

[bob mitchell]

one other trick, although it can damage the surrounding wood (especially good for demo work) is to take a side grinder with a thin cut off blade and recut the slot the screw driver goes in.

[Hans Petrie]

Yes indeed.  I have used clear vertical grain Doug Fir when I repaired a four foot rotten section of the mizzen seven years ago.  But I did not scarf it in.  Rather cut out 4 foot section.  Then used an 8 foot "solid core" to slip into the bottom and top of the mast.  Then put in a "shell" around the 4 foot section.  It has held up fairly well and has not rotten out.  But there are some issues around the "seams" and some splitting of the old boards due to swelling from moisture that got in there. 

 

Today I was able to pull all the hardware from the main.  I discovered the most amazing trick for removing large "stuck" flat head screws that will not normally be removable just using a large flat head screwdriver.

 

Use a cold chisel like a screwdriver with a vice grip firmly gripped on to the end of it at 90 degree angle.  Hold the vice grip with left hand and insert chisel into slot of big flat head screw.  Use hammer and bang the cold chisel with right hand.  Turn the vice grip slightly counterclockwise when you bang the hammer.  Keep doing this and the most stubborn screws that just normally strip out come out easily with little effort.  This is the most amazing discover for me as I have had so much bad luck stripping out big flat head screws and have to drill them out!  With this method I can remove any flat head screw, no matter how stubborn.  Probably everybody else on the planet knew this but I just re-invented fire.