Ship Repair

[Gummo MarxParticipant @gummomarx71909]

[Gummo MarxParticipant @gummomarx71909]

Help! My sister-in-law has placed unfounded faith in my ability to fix the masts on this model ship – something I've never remotely looked at, never mind touched.

Anyone know where I can get replacement masts? I've hunted on the Net till I'm blue in the face.

The ship's marked as a 'Trois Mats Barque'.

[Roger ClarkParticipant @rogerclark]

Trois Mats Barque is just a generic name for that type of ship so finding an exact replacement woudl be near impossible.

You could drill the 2 broken parts and insert a loose metal peg with plenty of epoxy type glue and hold it in position until the glue sets and you should have an invisible joint. Otherwise you would need to buy a length of dowel and fashion to size.

Other than that put some holes in the sails and hull and say it's been in battle

Regards

Roger

[Fred wooleyParticipant @fredwooley76212]

Go to a Diy shop and buy some dowel,as Roger has said you wont buy them BUT you can MAKE them so easily…..get the length you require and put one end in a drill and clamp drill to bench and use some coarse sand paper and taper it down carefully,use some wood stain to colour

Fred

[ashley needhamParticipant @ashleyneedham69188]

Not an invisible repair, but you could sleeve the break with thin-wall brass tubing and epoxy/paint to match.

It may be that you will have difficulty in removing the mast if you wanted to replace the whole thing.

Ashley

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

I think Roger's suggestion of glueing and pinning the existing mast back together would be simplest, superglue might do the job well enough.

Otherwise, for replacement, a cheap and cheerful solution is to buy an inexpensive set of artists brushes, something like this from The Works for example:

**LINK**

They are already tapered and varnished and you can often find one the right size.

Colin

[Malcolm FraryParticipant @malcolmfrary95515]

As Roger suggests, a slightly oversize hole up each part and an internal splint epoxied in place. Since it is decorative rather than working, a piece of toothpick rather than a metal peg would do.

If it wasn't so prominent, a bit of clear heatshrink might do the job, possibly forming a  sleeve over Colin's superglue butt join.  If the ends are jaggy enough, the butt join could well be enough by itself.

Edited By Malcolm Frary on 20/08/2020 22:44:34

[Gummo MarxParticipant @gummomarx71909]

Thanks very much for your inspring solutions – I went down the dowel route, couldn't wait for an online purchase to arrive so I took the horizontal off a wooden clothes-hanger. I sanded it for ages down to the correct diameter – it worked like a dream (after using three different wood dyes.

[Malcolm FraryParticipant @malcolmfrary95515]

Some shops sell mast and spar replacement parts but they mis-label them as "chopsticks" or "kebab skewers".

I expect they think that the exotic eating market is bigger than that for model boat parts.

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