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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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