Tanzer 16 Hinged Mast Retrofit -- Part 2 -- making the attachment plugs

Tanzer 16 Hinged Mast Retrofit -- Part 2 -- making the attachment plugs  -- September 2, 2014 -- Now that we had the mast and the hinge, we had to come up with a way to attach the pieces together.  Some plugs for the mast.  O'Day sells those along with the hinge, but of course they wouldn't fit this mast.  So--first to capture the exact shape of the inside of the mast the fitting that attaches the mast to the keelson was removed.

Try not to loose too many of the little styrene beads.  They keep the water

out if you capsize.

Then plaster poured into an old container created a mold of the mast side of the old plug.  That allowed us to make an exact tracing.  I explored the idea of having the plugs cast out of aluminum or resin and called a friend to makes tooling for resin casting.  He suggested I find someone with a sand casting shop or make it out of wood.  "The have been using wood on boats for a few thousand years," he didn't say too sarcastically.

I used Fix-It-All, but plaster would have worked just fine.

I just wanted something more accurate than tracing the

outline with a pencil.

This is what I took to Ron.  He is such a perfectionist that he gave me

three samples--one cut in the middle of the line, one to the outside of the 

line and another to the inside of the line. (His shop is cleaner that most 

restaurants and some operating rooms.)

I had a nice piece of  2-inch thick oak provided by crew, Tony. At this point, I could have gone over to the band saw and cut the plugs and sanded them down to an exact fit--well, a pretty close fit--I wanted it nicer.
So-- planed the board down so both sides were clean and parallel.  The oak board and the pattern then went to Ron who owns a Shop Bot and he created some 1 1/2 inch thick plugs of that fit the mast nicely.

I asked Ron to make three of these plugs because I am thinking that

I would like to improve the mast step on the keelson while we are this

deep into the project.

Next step: Fabricate the base for the mast step on the keelson.  Of course it won't be the mast step any longer; it will be the base for the king post.

Today's Cliche:  The Internet contains vast amounts of information, but not a scrap of judgment or wisdom.