With the heat and the rain holding up any major epoxy progress, I turned to fabricating/re-working the 3 SCAMP spars: Mast, Boom, & Yard.
Two of them I got for FREE, a year ago, last July!! :D
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A 20-foot mast and a 10-foot boom, off of a 16-foot Luger sailboat.
What the SCAMP requires however, is a 17-foot mast and a 12-foot boom.
Actually, that's a cause for some debate: :-X
The plans on Pg. 8 show a boom length of 11 feet, but many builders advocate for 12 feet, to allow room for out hauls and reefing hardware and whatnot
I am a little skeptical myself, ::) but went for the 12 feet just in case, but will have no hesitation in cutting it shorter, at a later date.
Fortunately, they both use the same Dwyer mast DM-284 extrusion.
All I needed was a tube to splice the boom sections together.
So I took a deep breath (and a final measurement check!) :o and sawed the mast to length and proceeded to make a 12-foot boom.
From top of pic: mast, boom, cut-off section, splice tube.
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I cut off the raggedy ends and shortened the boom extension to the proper length.
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While I was at it, I grabbed the yard and the smaller splice tube for the yard.
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Some hardwood end caps for the yard. Started with a dowel and rounded the end on one side. They are just slightly too small, but I figure after 3 or 4 coats of epoxy, they'll fit fine.
With the splice epoxied and the end caps epoxied in place, the yard should float.
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The peak of the yard has 3 holes and the throat of the yard has two holes.
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For reasons, which still escape me. ???
Before gluing anything together, I needed to sand off a few decades of oxidation, with some 80 grit sandpaper.
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Gluing the splice joint. Note the "squeeze-out" as the splice tube displaced the epoxy glue I had applied on the inside of the boom; it was a close fit.
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And the extension added to the splice.
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All that discoloration at left, is from the epoxy and from handling and will be sanded off after the epoxy cures.
Yard splice at top and the boom splice, underneath. They felt pretty solid.
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But I'm adding pop-rivets, anyway.
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8 for the yard, 4 top and 4 bottom.
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And 12 for the boom; bottom and both sides.
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All this stuff was SUPPOSED to be done in Phase IV: Rigging and hardware installation.
But, NOOOOO!!!! >:(
Why should my personal project management sequencing be any more successful, than 15 years of construction project management sequencing charts, was?!? >:(
The weather finally dried up enough, to allow some limited epoxy, so I applied some to the bench seat rails.
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I had screaming fits on one of the rails, :P trying to get the saw kerfs and the router bit round-overs, right.
I ended up with all kinds of grooves on one of the rails.
After going back and forth for a few weeks on whether or not I should somehow try to fix it, or just go get another expensive piece of select lumber and try again, I got the bright idea to pour thickened epoxy into the grooves and voila!! Smooth rails on BOTH sides!! 8)
And the yard caps.
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Every single piece of wood on this boat, gets 3 coats of epoxy.
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Filled in all the screw holes from installing the deck.
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Looks like an acupuncture deck. :o
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Used up a bag and a half, of skewers.
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Also filled in all the over-drilled holes with thickened epoxy and coated the edges of the rod holder holes..
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Next step is to apply epoxy (3 coats) to both edges of the deck that were routed and rasped. (Is that a verb?!?) ???
The goal is no exposed wood on this craft, only epoxy and paint.
So far, it's working.
Charles Brennan
Good work. Will you use the spliced end of the mast as the top?
Dale, The mast is a single piece; the boom required the extension from 10 feet, to 12 (or maybe 11!) feet.
The splice will be at the aft end, which sounds counter-intuitive, due to main sheet loading and whatnot.
But on a balanced lug rig, part of the main sail is ahead of the mast and has to be honked down insanely tight with the down haul in order to point better, and those forces would be very close to the spliced area, so spliced on the aft end of the boom, it is! :)
Hope this clarifies,
Charles Brennan
Quote from: Charles Brennan on Jul 26, 2025, 11:04 PMthat were routed and rasped. (Is that a verb?!?)
Yes.
So much for reading comprehension - ugh!
You've got it figured out. I tighten my boom with a 4:1 purchase.
Boom purchase.
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