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After a few days of curing the we took the mast out of the shed and rebuilt it. Did something I haven’t done in years… used a rivet gun, had to buy the rivet gun first and a load of stainless steal rivets.
As the mast was looking so nice, we decided to tidy up the spreader bars, which where looking tatty. Being sikaflexed to the mast hadn’t helped things as getting it off had required some force. So to stop the existing corrosion we sprayed it with Hammerite Straight to Metal paint.
Had a couple of runs in the paint, but its up the mast and its not that noticeable so rather than going back to fix them just got on with the job. Might do something later, but the objective is to get back out sailing.
Most of the fittings on the mast are stainless steal, so apart from polishing them up a bit they don’t need a huge amount of prep. Still put TefGel under them as an inhibitor and around the rivets. The two aluminium fittings, the spreader bar and the main halyard cleat, get a lot of TefGel between them and the mast & rivets.
TefGel is a teflon based gel, which we use instead of Duralac, the yellow stuff under some of the older fittings on this boat, as a corrosion inhibitor. Neither is particularly pleasant,but TefGel remains in a Gel state rather than hardening, so it easier in the long term.
The wire for the diamonds was badly bent and twisted, and here is where this might get controversial, we don’t have any metal rigging equipment, but we have been making fibre rigging for the 14.
New diamonds are 2.5mm SK98D12 spectra, lighter, stronger and better stretch characteristics than 1×19 wire. Also not class legal. It is so much easier to work with maybe the class should consider this as a way forward.
With the still wire shrouds and forestay fitted (We do have 3mm spectra we could use, but didn’t). The remaining jobs are; Fit a new 2:1 Main halyard, using 2mm spectra, just need to jacket it where it goes through the cleat and new spectra trapeze wires. We then be able to focus on the racks and finalising the layout.
Shiny mast! 
Spreader Bar after painting Spreader Bar before painting. The joy of TefGel
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2 Comments on “RS600 – Mast rebuild, some new rigging & cleaned up fittings”
Any information about what you did with the halyard sheave? My 600 came without one and being US based there are not a lot of example to look at. I installed an aluminum sheave roller from Allen. My problem is that the halyard keeps jumping and the boat must be rolled to the side to sort things out. Sometimes I hoist the sail on the ramp (floating plastic) on its side to avoid the problem.
I’d also love to put in a 2-1 as I’m finding the new sail a tighter fit in the Angel mast than the old sail, even with frequent mclubing.
Appreciate the entire series. Having only videos and occasional photos to look for where the class has gone with rigging is immensely helpful. Thank you!
Hi Dan,
For the sheeve you can use Chafe Tape (See Rooster Site https://www.roostersailing.com/products/129764) to pack the gap between the sheeve and the mast wall. It’s not cheap stuff but very hard.
We’ve only just finished refitting our ‘new’ angel mast, if you can call a 25 year old mast new, so haven’t documented it yet. To do a 2:1 we did the following: Replaced the existing sheeve with a Harken 16mm sheeve and the pin with a M4 bolt. We then spliced a 2mm spectra halyard to the bolt between the head and the nut creating the dead end point for the 2:1. Have only used it once in anger, so still assessing, but in theory should work fine.