Cutting down a Gofoil mast-possible?

[toejammer2]

Saw one of Pono Bill’s older posts mentioning Alan Cadiz having people begin winging on a 12” cut down Gofoil mast. Any idea how to do it?  Replacing the the Deep Tuttle head would become a weak point wouldn’t it? The 17.7” Axis mast is just about right for my shallow break but  I love to do prone on my Gofoil wings.
Cheers

[Surfside]

Not too hard to do... Check out this guy's videos

[PonoBill]

Very cool, that's how I'd do it. There are several ways to make the mold, but that's a good'un. I'd chop carbon into the epoxy and stuff wetted short bits of carbon into the mold, but yup, that would do it.

I'm sure what Alan did was go to Alex's shop and get him to use his Tuttle mold to make a super short mast. The other, messier but effective option is to cut a section out of the middle, sand (or better yet, mill) the parts to be joined down into a fairly thin blade. Put them in a jig to keep them straight, and build them back up with ten or so layers of carbon on each side. Then sand to shape. Probably draggy, weaker, and a lot more work than molding on a Tuttle would be.

The third option, get one of the Tuttle to track adapters. Cut down the mast, drill a bunch of 1/4" holes near the bottom of the mast like the guy in the video did and stick it in the adapter. Jig it up to get it straight and stuff it full of wet carbon bits. More expensive and you'd need tracks.

[surfcowboy]

This seems like a good place to put this lol. I’ve been wanting to make a carbon fuselage and can’t figure out how people mold stuff that looks like a block of carbon like a Tuttle head. Is it just a ton of chopped fibers, or is it cloth layers? Some of both?

I’m wondering if to get the ratio right if I need to just stack up 100 layers of carbon strips into a mold or if I could make a carbon paste that would be close enough to 50/50 to work. Seems like this would go for the Tuttle heads too.

[Surfside]

SC, I repaired and modified a foil mast with a damaged tuttle. I used layers of cloth, sanded to a rough deep tuttle shape then set it in the mold as seen in the video filled with resin, milled and chopped fiber.
Also, I think he has a video showing a foil mast build.

Happy Building 

[surfcowboy]

Thx man. I saw that video. I’m gonna play around with some molding next I think. I love that guy’s video style. Sped up but showing everything is kind of genius since we can slow things down when we want to see something.

Post up what happens with this.