Sunday, November 30, 2014

Fabricating the downrigger poles

Spent the past month or so working on the down rigger poles, hinges, and other bits and pieces of the aft mast assembly. I have mostly been tackling this job "an hour here - two hours there", so progress has been kind of slow. I also miss the long daylight hours from the summer- hard to get much done once it gets cold and dark. As soon as I get enough parts cut, fit-up, and prepped, I'll have Romero come by for a day or two to do all the welding. This is all aluminum, fairly thick material, and the end product will need to withstand a lot of stress without breaking. For this, I only trust the professionals to do the hot work. If you refer back to the drawing in the previous post, you can probably figure out which parts are which in these pics. The last photo is the UHMW plastic saddle for the mast support at the back of the wheelhouse roof. More to come...