papierschnitzel

How to insert the main mast

Added 2018-11-19 11:27:08 +0000 UTC

Now that the hull is finished I need to start thinking about how I am going to connect the mast to the hull.

For the gunboat I had no hull volume to insert the mast, so I had to keep it in position with the sails and stay lines. But this time I have some space below deck to make a hole and insert the mast.

I have come up with two approaches and today I will show you the first one. The way I build the masts is by inserting a triangle shape column into the outer hex shape column. With the gun boat I was gluing the triangle into the hex and if you took too long to insert them, you could have problems as the paper would get soft with glue.

So this time I wanted to make the parts stronger, so I make each one out of two layers out of 160gsm paper.

This results in more sturdy parts. The inner triangle one I squeeze fold a little so it becomes a little smaller and I will be able to insert it more easy.

The parts are strong enough on their own but when I combine them you get a really nice and sturdy mast.

You will have noticed the cut slots. These are to insert the mast over the hull formers. We need to get this ...

... into and over this!

Here is a view without the deck.

I have to make more tests and see how it will assemble with texturing (I want to avoid seams in the skin) and also figure out another part to slide over at the bottom of the deck to hide the slots which may show a little over the deck.

I want to make another version with an intermediate part between the mast and the hull and see which one works better.

And then we need the main mast to be longer than page height, so I will need to work on something like this to combine mast parts...