Memory tells me that these were "swaged" ie run in a sodding great squeezer which reduced it's diameter as it travelled up the length, starting with the 51mm tube.

no not now as they had a tendency to suddenly collapse I have had one which we cut up and used as a 4 piece mast with wooden joiners . you'd still need a base stiffener. it does look to be in good nick, be careful not to dent it

I intend to give it a try I will definitely put a stiffener inside the bottom section
for a metre or more I like its slimness at the top Must be good for the sail shape
Have you found some more spots yet? One good thing about the minis is you dont need big areas to have fun I used to see mini yachts sailing on the top of a carpark building here some years ago at night must have got permission somehow
I use a local park which is near the water so gives clean air
Cheers Hiko

An hours drive from Rotorua in Tauranga on the coast
I think you have just missed the great summer we have just had

cisco said...

It would be good to get a group together to bulk buy the sections and fittings for import. Any takers???

I'd be interested, depending on the final cost of course. I thought there were a couple of good ally mast manufacturers in Aus that were spoken about a while ago that didn't fare to badly with price?

cisco said...

That mast is a nice piece of technology. The Froggies really know what they are doing with aluminium.

Has anybody had a good look at the Seagull masts. They are telescoping ally sections with plastic stoppers at the joins.

It would be good to get a group together to bulk buy the sections and fittings for import. Any takers???

I have had a pretty good look, (sold over 20 of them). If you check the dimensions in the Promo rule you will know what the diameters are. What you won't know is how the internal sleeves assemble together. I used to have all the details but long since thrown away. The bottom section has all of the top end bits inside, in various lengths, in the case of the "factory" team they were adjusted by the sailors too suit body weight to "best" flex.

French tube has been 2mm wall since AT LEAST 1988.
The masts I have made with good telescoping ability are always from T8 1.42mm wall. While it appears that you should be able to telescope 1.6mm tube, in my experience, there is not sufficient tolerance to slide the tubes reliably. Mathematically it checks out, but real life is just a bit different.The tubes we can get in NZ are all translations of imperial sizes so may be different from what you can get on the other side of the ditch. Get it wrong, and they will VERY quickly weld themselves with a friction weld, and you will NEVER get them apart. Scrupulously clean inside and out, dead square cuts with no lead or tapering at all, and slow steady pushing together with a lubricant like Inox may get the 1.6mm together. Try short cutting any of the above, or push fast and see what the results are!
I am not totally sure that T6 is quite good enough either! Close, but I have wrecked too many to be confident. The grade (from memory) was 6361??
In the early days of windsurfing this was a part of my job, we were making upwards of 8 boards a day with ally masts made this way, and we rejected probably an average of 1 mast per day!

Hi,
I noticed this post, I have been buying high tensile tube , firstly for gryocopters. airborne trikes and now land yacht masts, for a few years from Bob Kiely
(Light Spars Of Austrlia
6 Horscroft Pl, Moorabbin,
VIC 3189
p: (03) 9555 4622 f: (03) 9555 4965)

Bob still only uses phone / faxes ( as he says he is still using carrier pigions)
Bob has supplied masts for Travis Bartlet(through a supplier) and 2 directly to me.
He tests the tenstile strength of all his tube before he lets it go.
He is a great guy and has had years of experience in making masts .
Cheers
Aus 230