Just WOW! Thank you. So much expertise, I will enjoy my reading.

Thank you Kevin. I hope I didn't sound dismissive, they look like a good company.

Haha! Good old A.I. Seems to be everywhere, no surprise that it pointed the way to JRA! I have to say, I'm in a few forums, old VWs, 3D printing etc. and nowhere have I found so many very knowledgable and very helpful people.

I'm sort of coming to the decision that making an 8 stave, birds mouth wooden mast might be my best option, if I can source some good timber.

I'm sure there must be some people here who have done it, do you know of any?

Hi Kevin,

Thank you, that's interesting. The price is a little eye watering unfortunately. My budget is about £3K for the entire project, including sail!

Over a year ago we saw an ad for (French based) makers of wooden masts and contacted them - the correspondence is below.  We know nothing else about them but maybe others do?  In any case, putting it out there in case of use to someone

Dear Kevin

Thanks for this opportunity. 

We are wooden masts makers and we can build every design you need. 

Actually our brand are shipping masts to many different countries. We have facilities in logistics solutions. 

I can not give you a catalog or products price list. Because we have only custom project. 

We can provide a rough estimate easily if you have base diameter and length.

For example,  a 10m douglas fir lamellae mast,  180-100cm tapered. Turned and sanded. Cost around 3200€ exc VAT and delivery. 

Do you have any projects for now?

Samuel Zambaldi Www.Woodspars.comContact@woodspars.com

Le mar. 19 sept. 2023, 19:33, Woodspars <contact@woodspars.com> a écrit :

Nouveau message depuis le site WoodSpars : 

Prénom: Kevin
Nom: Cardiff
Ville: Dublin
Téléphone: 0877971243
Email: chair@junkrigassociation.org
Message: Hi
I am chair of the junk rig association.  Many of our members convert boats to junk rig or even build their own boats and the availability of masts,
Yards and the sturdy battens we use is often an issue.   Can you give me a description of your range of services and costs?  For your information, a junk rig boat typically has a tapered free standing keel stepped mast in aluminium or wood or composite

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Date: September 19, 2023
Time: 7:33 pm
Page URL: https://www.woodspars.com/en/?fbclid=IwAR2Oj513BZT6nWLFgnE8uHhORf6YvsBHT-c8AJwCkaZtSxFAe63sJ2x_dbo_aem_Ae2Z55cfm0wtZbUVn64nASOyUY9sF_x-CRl9rnIx1O0f5BdYXwhf98a4WHv25-VNdAA

Anonymous wrote:

Hi Tony,

I hadn't set my sights on any particular type, just whatever comes up. However I hadn't (until now) considered making my own. Strange, because I have every possible tool available to man and spent 20 years running a woodworking business!

What timber did you use and did you design it?

I used spruce (fairly knot-free, but not entirely) and finished it with a layer of biaxial cloth in epoxy and 2 component polyurethane paint.

Yes, I designed them myself. 200mm diameter at the partners, tapering to 100mm at the top, and a taper from the partners down to the mast foot. I scarfed up lengths of 80 x 80 spruce to the desired length, cut an angle off the inside corners and glued (all epoxy glued) them together to make one piece 160 x 160 with a 50mm hole up the middle for cables. I them glued some boards on the parts that needed to be thicker than that, bringing them up to about 200 x 200 and then set to work with the circular saw and planer, cutting the square section to a tapered octagon and then planed to round cross-section with the desired double taper.

With the wonders of hindsight, I can say that it was all really quite easy and I'd do it again that way. I just used a long straight edge to see that the tapers were even and they've turned out really quite well.