Author Topic: mast plate help!  (Read 5286 times)

Rhodetripper

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mast plate help!
« on: March 19, 2021, 12:09:27 PM »
Hi All,

Long time lurker, first time poster. First of all, this forum has been a huge help to me as I've jumped full on (wallet and all) into wing foiling coming from a purely surf background. I guess I am the prototypical growth demographic for wings/foils.

Needless to say, its be a journey of ups and downs, but am loving the process of progression. I even took the plunge and built my own ~60L foil board which has been working like a dream.

Anyway, I have a Naish foil set up and the screw that holds my mast to the abracadabra plate sheared in half on my last session. I now have no way of attaching any of my masts/foils to my board and it has been a major downer now that we're in the windy spring season here in RI. Naish has discontinued these parts, and I can only find a few in stock in Australia but nobody wants to ship to the US.

I've got some thoughts on how I might repair it but thought I'd reach out to this brain trust for guidance/feedback.

I am basically thinking of trying to bond the whole set up together, and make it more like a standard board/mast plate. I lose the quick on/off but (hopefully) gain greater stability/rigidity and most importantly can get back in the water without buying a whole new set up.

Instead of trying to drill into the bottom metal plate (alu i think?) I would make a carbon fiber plate and epoxy it to the top abracadabra plate. I would then epoxy in the mast attachment piece (silver section that the mast screws into) and once cured, drill the holes through the carbon plate and run the M6 bolts through the carbon plate into the mast attachment. This way I can still swap masts if I need to. So the plate will be bonded, I'll have three screws into the mast attachment from the bottom of the plate, and the standard mounting screws coming from the top plate, through the carbon and into the board.

Any thoughts on if this might be successful or if I'll most likely have a catastrophic failure and lose everything?

Needless to say I've been stewing over this for the past week but I cannot find any replacement parts out there so here I am! Not too happy with this single point of failure basically trashing all the gear I've accumulated but nothing I can do about that now.

Thanks in advance for any guidance

-Chris

 

Wingingtanuki

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Re: mast plate help!
« Reply #1 on: March 19, 2021, 12:29:57 PM »
Am I missing something obvious?

Why not just drill out the broken bolt, re-tap the threads and put in a new bolt?


jondrums

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Re: mast plate help!
« Reply #2 on: March 19, 2021, 12:43:57 PM »
left handed drill bit set will save you here.  Drill into the fastener with increasing sizes of left handed drill bits.  At a certain point the remains will spin right out.  The EZ-out kits are useless in my experience.

Rhodetripper

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Re: mast plate help!
« Reply #3 on: March 19, 2021, 12:54:54 PM »
Thanks for the replies.

I’ve had bad luck drilling out screws so I am a little gun shy to try again. I ruined my previous fuselage when trying to drill out another sheared off screw and ended up walking the bit and ruining hole.

 I could could use my more hair-brained scheme as a fall back plan as it ruining the threads won’t matter at all.

Are other people shearing screws in half like me or am I the only one doing something wrong here??


Wingingtanuki

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Re: mast plate help!
« Reply #4 on: March 19, 2021, 01:03:44 PM »

Are other people shearing screws in half like me or am I the only one doing something wrong here??


My guess is that you're not taking the thing apart after use and the stainless and aluminium are doing bad things together.

Those things will end up practically welded together if you don't do the old disassemble, rinse and lube routine.


flkiter

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Re: mast plate help!
« Reply #5 on: March 19, 2021, 02:04:00 PM »
I drilled and tapped out one of those to an M8 for a friend. Hasn't had an issue since

Dwight (DW)

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Re: mast plate help!
« Reply #6 on: March 19, 2021, 04:14:26 PM »
[
« Last Edit: March 19, 2021, 04:18:15 PM by Dwight (DW) »

PonoBill

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Re: mast plate help!
« Reply #7 on: March 20, 2021, 06:16:26 AM »
The key to drilling out a screw is precisely placing the centerpunch and starting with a small bit. you are probably going to have to drill the screw completely out, threads and all. if you left it together too long and didn't use an anti-seize compound like TefGel--which is absolutely necessary--then it's welded and probably won't turn out with a left-handed drill. There isn't a huge amount of meat on that mating tang for an 8mm screw, but if FLKiter was able to do it, it must be enough. It looks from the pictures that the screw is threaded into both pieces, which is a bit weird. If I were doing this for myself I'd take the screw out of the upper part, use the tang hole as a drill guide (with a small hole drilled in the broken screw to keep the drill centered) and drill right through both pieces. Then run an 8mm tap through both pieces so the threads would be synchronized. If the tang has too little meat you could drill out the broken screw, countersink a 6mm screw into the bottom of the plate and screw it upwards into the tang. You wouldn't be able to take the mast off quickly, but everything would work as normal.

If you're not mechanically inclined you might get someone who is to do this for you. Not trivial. But I wouldn't bodge this up with a bunch of expoxied parts trying to stick them to aluminum. Not only is that likely to fail, but you're also talking about something that would be twenty times the work to do it right.
« Last Edit: March 20, 2021, 06:24:51 AM by PonoBill »
Foote 10'4X34", SIC 17.5 V1 hollow and an EPS one in Hood River. Foote 9'0" x 31", L41 8'8", 18' Speedboard, etc. etc.

Califoilia

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Re: mast plate help!
« Reply #8 on: March 20, 2021, 09:35:03 AM »
Deleted by me:  Got a closer look at an "Abracadabra" (silly name), and what I had originally written won't actually work. Care on...
« Last Edit: March 20, 2021, 09:46:38 AM by Califoilia »
Me: 6'1"/185...(2) 5'1" Kings Foil/Wing Boards...7'10 Kings DW Board...9'6" Bob Pearson "Laird Noserider"...14' Lahui Kai "Manta"...8'0" WaveStorm if/when the proning urges still hit.

clay

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Re: mast plate help!
« Reply #9 on: March 20, 2021, 11:08:24 AM »
What about ditching the abracadabra and getting the regular plate mount head?
Aloha, I welcome and appreciate all responses of positivity and good feeling.

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Rhodetripper

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Re: mast plate help!
« Reply #10 on: March 20, 2021, 02:42:17 PM »
Thanks for all the input.

I am going to try and drill out the original screw. It’s actually quite shallow as it only goes into the top plate, not all the way through to the bottom. I only have a hand drill not a drill press so I’ll start with a very small diameter but and see if it’s working.

I’d buy the standard Naish plate in a heartbeat but they stopped making them and can’t find any used ones for sale on the web without buying a whole foil/mast set up. I get that obsolescence is often the price of innovation but it sucks when one small component breaks and now I’m out to sea without a foil  :-[

The abracadabra plate is convenient but in my experience it hasn’t been a very rigid connection. Lots of play and wiggle all the way down the mast. This is part of the reason why I was originally leaning towards bonding everything together.

PonoBill

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Re: mast plate help!
« Reply #11 on: March 20, 2021, 09:31:56 PM »
It's possible other mast plates would fit on your mast.
Foote 10'4X34", SIC 17.5 V1 hollow and an EPS one in Hood River. Foote 9'0" x 31", L41 8'8", 18' Speedboard, etc. etc.

surfcowboy

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Re: mast plate help!
« Reply #12 on: March 20, 2021, 09:32:33 PM »
If that’s the standard Naish mast I think maybe 4-5 brands of foils use them. Any of those plates should work.

PonoBill

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Re: mast plate help!
« Reply #13 on: March 20, 2021, 10:42:45 PM »
You could just sand the paint off, goop the whole thing up with some JB weld, and slide it together. You'd want to use quite a bit, but I've seen that stuff get used to repair things I never would have believed it could hold for. If you were nearby I'd just run a bead of weld along both sides and call it done. Anyone who is decent with a TIG or MIG with a spool gun could turn that into one piece in a few minutes.
Foote 10'4X34", SIC 17.5 V1 hollow and an EPS one in Hood River. Foote 9'0" x 31", L41 8'8", 18' Speedboard, etc. etc.

Dwight (DW)

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Re: mast plate help!
« Reply #14 on: March 21, 2021, 04:01:59 AM »
I think Takuma base plate fits original Naish mast. Not sure, but my bad memory says yes.

 


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