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A new winter project has moved itself to front of the pack after removing my mizzen mast last weekend. It appears as though my wooden spreaders are in very tough shape and have a lot of rot at the fittings.
Clearly I need to build new ones and will probably stick with wood. I've heard some say to use solid spruce or white oak, others recommended glueing strips of the wood together with epoxy to create almost a plywood of sorts. I plan to keep the original hardware as it's worked this long, fits the hardware on the mast, and appears to be in good condition. The construction of the spreaders were interesting. It was two pieces, top and bottom, glued together. I'm not exactly sure how they stayed together as long as they did as it was pretty easy to pull them apart once removed. Has anyone rebuilt their spreaders?
I've built many spreaders. My first choice is Sitka Spruce. It is quite strong, very light weight and holds fasteners well. I doubt you need to do a laminate, but it doesn't hurt if you do. Oak is certainly strong enough, but the excess weight aloft won't help, though for a cruising boat it won't hurt much either. For a usually easy to acquire option which many lumber yards carry is douglas fir. Very similar characteristics to spruce but a little heavier.
The only real load on spreaders or jumper struts is compression. If you mill almost any wood to the same dimensions as your existing spreaders they should work fine. You can even change them a little as long as the length doesn't change and your hardware still fits. The most common failure is splitting. Your end fitting should keep that from happening.
Dave Finnegan
builder of Spindrift 9N #521 'Wingë'
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Although the spruce takes fasteners well, the last set I replaced, I overdrilled all the holes for the fasteners, filled with epoxy and re-drilled. I did this to avoid the scenario portrayed in your pictures.
I've scrounged spruce for just this sort of thing. In fact, a Star's spraders are new deck beams and the mast will be deck supports and rubrails in my FD restoration.
I think I'd use spruce for the replacement; I'd coat out the end grain and bolt bores with epoxy to try to calm down the problem from recurring soon. I'd finish the top of the spreaders with paint and the bottom with varnish - a trick I learned from the Morgan List. Means you protect the wood from UV and enjoy the appearance and let the varnish reveal problems in the wood.
hardware work at the mast? It looks like 3 through bolts all on the glue line.
I'm used to seeing SS pockets for the spreader ends on spruce spars. These contain the ends and any bolting is usually minimal and perpendicular to these bolts. Of course the pocket takes the compression forces. In your hardware, it looks like the force is carried by the bolts?
This is an area of design that failed on a spar here which resulted in losing it. The spreader snapped in the same area as your photo and led to loosing the spar.
It was redesigned to better handle the stresses in the spreader pocket. Anything you can do to improve your attachment? Maybe it went long enough not to bother as long as you're aware of it.
Another whole option for spreader replacement is to go aluminum.
There's a company called New JSI that will replicate your old wood spreader in aluminum. The flat rate is $425.
Not as cheap as making our own, or as sexy as a beautiful wooden spreader, but another option nonetheless.
Thanks for all the advice, I do appreciate it. I think I'm going to replace with spruce and do the epoxy trick where the fasteners travel through the wood. I plan to use the original hardware.
The boat comes out this weekend unfortunately, but we logged more than 700nm this summer which is not too shabby.
