Final Stages of Alberg 30 Mast Beam Reinforcement

Guys, here is a much needed update to the blog. 

I have finally got the mast support reinforcement 90% complete. I have all the major pieces made and in place. Now all that's left is the finish work. That will come later this fall when working inside the boat is more feasible...right now it is just too hot.

I first drew the archway on the G10 which would become the basis for the support. It took several attempts to get the archway the way I wanted it. 

If you look closely you can see that I epoxied another piece of G10 that spanned between the doorway. This provided additional surface area for the main beam to rest on. Total thickness is 3/4 of an inch.

After obtaining the arch I wanted, I took piece over to my friend's machine shop to use his large bandsaw. It makes quick work of of the G10!

You can see just how large this bandsaw is as I began to fabricate the knees for the addition beam.

All rough cut, the blade on the bandsaw is an inch thick so it does not make very tight radii.

After some time with a small pneumatic angle grinder and some 36 grit the knees were all shaped and ready for drilling

The archway bolted in place with new 304 stainless hardware.

And there is my idea of a proper mast support beam for a liner Alberg 30

You can see that it is all bolted together, even the knees are thru-bolted. I will not be stopping there though. I will be epoxying the whole thing together with heavy radius-ed fillets.  

This is the view from the v-berth. I added some G10 plate to the bulkhead where the fasteners passed through. I wanted to spread any load out over a larger area.

Another v-berth angle.

As stated earlier all the rough work is completed on the new main support beam and reinforcement. I still have all the finish work to do. That will include rounding and sanding all the sharp edges of the knees and archway. I can then clean and epoxy it all together.

Most of these photos were taken at the end of May, and since then I have moved onto the stbd side decks for recore and repair. The weather these past few weeks has not been conductive to any outside work. The outside air temperature has been just below or just over 100 degrees with heat index most days topping 110. Not fun for a redhead, we gingers just cannot cope with that type of heat.

Stay tuned as I update you on starboard side deck jobs.