I made plugs for the base, partners and tip. The practice mast section I made earlier came in handy as I just traced the interior octagon onto some scrap timber and bandsawed the plugs slightly under-size in a few minutes.
The mast base plug is a bit smaller due to the taper but I did not bother to lay it out accurately, just eyeballed it and it fits fine. The mast tip plug started out as a tapered octagon but I quickly gave up on that and just hit it with a belt sander to get a tapered roundish shape. All the plugs are set in thickened epoxy so the shapes and fit are not critical. The base plug is about 1.5 inches thick. The partners plug is two 1.5 inch thick plugs back to back. And the tip plug is about 6 inches long. That should be strong enough. I drilled holes through the partners and base plugs for ventilation if need be. I might make a little screw in plug for the base hole to use while sailing and leave it out when mast is in storage, maybe.
Base and partners plugs dry fit
Looking at the partners plug from mast base, dry fit
Mast tip plug dry fit
Mast interior coated with epoxy prior to assembly
Lots of thickened epoxy on plugs
I keep being surprised at how much epoxy this is taking. I used about 12 oz total for the interior coating, bedding of plugs and joining of the two halves. That brings the total epoxy used on the mast so far to about 26 oz. That's 2 pounds of epoxy, lot of weight!
Total time to date: 93 hrs
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