Wood, aluminum, or steel for new bowsprit.

[F51]

Yet again time to play catch-up on the sprit. The original bowsprit was milled from one 9"x9" x 13-foot piece of mahogany. I'm tired of trying to keep the rot at bay, so I am looking to replace the whole thing with teak, aluminum or steel. Even here in teak country a 13-ft chunk of a tree is not going to be cheap. First quote for the teak was $3100. Ouch! Now I know why the builder used mahogany! I can get aluminum or steel square tube for a lot less. I am leaning toward the steel since any competent welding shop can cut and reseal the front part so it looks like a sprit. Then weld on some pad eyes to accept the stays.

Do I seal it up airtight or take it to Guatemala city to be galvanized inside and out? I'm sure I could find some good hard paint to adhere to the galvanizing.

Who on the forum has had experience building a bowsprit out of metal? Any special problems or concerns?

Thanks for any help. The combined wisdom here is awesome!

[softdown]

Even steel boats often have wooden bowsprits. I'm thinking aluminum for corrosion resistance and longevity. Aluminum welders are not that hard to find.

13' bowsprit? How long is the boat body?

[softdown]

Cedar is lightweight, stable, and rot resistant. I think the strength is fairly similar to mahogany.

[model 10]

I used stainless box. Came out nice and not that much heavier than the old wood job. Mine was only about 7' long.
Using steel allows you to put the anchor rode ahead of the front stay. I don't think a wood job could be strong enough.

[Jim Cate]

Even steel boats often have wooden bowsprits

Not so often in my observation, and plenty of production fibreglass boats have stainless steel sprits, so this is a specious argument IMO.

IF, as I suspect, the original sprit had bob and whisker stays, the aluminium sprit would work ok. Without those stays its lack of stiffness might be a problem. Stainless tubing, either square of round, would be my choice for strength, appearance and ease of fabrication.

Jim

[Benz]

It is very easy to fabricate a bowsprit out of fiberglass. My first one was polyester and glass, and I just updated to vinylester and carbon fiber. But polyester, glass and gelcoat should be easily sourced in Guatemala. You can wrap it around a PVC mandrel for ease, or make a cheap square tapered form out of wood if you want a specific shape.

[UNCIVILIZED]

For weight, strength, stiffness, & corrosion resistance, bare aluminum surely is nice. And neither the collar nor other attachments must be welded on. You can have a slip on, oversized, cranse iron fab'd up, so that when the welds need touching up or you want to modify things, you simply slip it off of the end of the sprit. And it would allow you to make the unit oversized, so that the stress on the welds would be lower, a nice perk, given aluminum's strength losses when welded.

Another option would be to simply get 4 large stainless D-Rings, & attach them to the tube using a circumferential Spectra lashing, or multi-strand Turk's Head knot. It's KISS, easy to modify, & or replace as needed, & you can put chafe sleeve in any high wear areas, along with Maxi Jacket or RP25.

If a single piece of Spectra is strong enough for spinnaker tacklines on 100'+ boats, then a Turk's Head made of the same stuff, or even Dacron, would be more than stout enough to hold the rings in place. And look classy/nautical to boot.

Plus of course, there are a variety of other braiding type knots that you could use. For example, use 1 piece of line & do a series of half hitches with it, for the spiral staircase effect around the tube. Or reverse the hitch direction with each consecutive knot, so that the raised line is straight instead of a spiral. And this technique can be done with 2 pieces of line, so as to give you 2 raised ridges of line. Or ditto 4 pieces of cordage. Ain't no lack of varieties.

If you want to stick with wood, you may be better of constructing it out of a laminated blank. It'd certainly be less expensive. And perhaps longer lived.

Steel does work, as evidenced by the long sprit on my neighbor's Colvin Gazelle. Her sprit was perhaps 8' long, & not any more maintenance intensive than anything else. You just need to figure out your snubber lead system so that your anchor chain can't rub on anything except perhaps the chain bobstay. With or without a piece of PVC pipe over the bobstay to minimize galvanizing wear.

Also, I'd be inclined to use an oversized piece of rod rigging for the bobstay, in lieu of wire, due to it's superior corrosion resistance. Just be sure to toggle it on both axis at both ends. You might even find a section of the stuff from a large boat that's rerigging. As generally it's the ends that go bad, from flexing. But the middle of a section of rod tends to remain viable for longer than it's entire length, & the rod only gets replaced when it's too short to re-head any more. Or the insurance company wants new rigging all the way around.

Note: Keep in mind that the stiffness of a beam goes up with the cube of it's thickness. The ratio is a bit less for hollow tubes, but you get the idea.

[Terra Nova]

Steel would be cheap, but heavy and more maintenance keeping the rust at bay. Try to keep weight out of the ends of the boat.

Fiberglass should not even be considered at all for a 13' bowsprit.

Teak is unnecessarily expensive. Spruce, while not very resistant to rot, is strong and light.

[bailsout]

Stay with mahogany or other similar wood and drown it in penetrating epoxy- Smith's- and finish it with clear coats epoxy 207 hardener West system and final 3 coats of varnish.

[Tayana42]

CF member Jolly Roger replaced a wood bowsprit with metal. His article was published in Good Old Boat magazine. Perhaps a PM to him would be useful.

[seasick]

I have fashioned several bowsprits out of spruce. In both instances I was able to source the material from broken masts that every yard and marina seems to have a collection of. Light weight, good compression strength, and good rot resistance if you can avoid any vertical fastenings.

[Rick Williams]

We replaced our wood bowsprit with a laminated wood bowsprit: we sandwiched a piece of 3/4" marine ply in between two pieces of Douglas fir ( lowest modulus of elasticity) and bonded it all with west system epoxy then several layers of penetrating epoxy and awlgrip. The whole thing was less than $400 as it's all locally available and very durable. I made the center laminate vertical for structural reasons and when all the attached hardware is bedded properly I expect it will last my lifetime.

[captlloyd]

Steel will work, just have them weld it airtight and no corrosion from inside. Epoxy primer and epoxy topcoat and you are good to go. You could have a small access plate fabricated in so that you could roll some paint around the interior after welding.

[wpackad]

Here is the ticket. Aluminum bowsprit constructed after two wood bowsprits failed in my 30 plus years of ownership of my HC 38MII #55. There are steel inserts in the rigging attachments, the stainless rails are held proud of the sides of the sprit with aluminum pipe thru which the mounting bolts pass, the windlass attachment bolts are drilled and taped into double thickness aluminum plate. This is a work of art. The fabricator took my original wood bowsprit and duplicated it exactly. There was one visit for planning, a second visit for initial fitting and then the completed unit delivered and installed with impeccable fit.

[Pauls]

For construction with steel, seal it up airtight. There can be no corrosion without oxygen. The oxygen inside the sprit will eventually be consumed and no more corrosion will be possible. Steel welds are basically 100% strength and do not weaken the tube. Aluminum, assuming you are going to use 6061T6, will loose 50% of its strength in the vicinity of the weld. Steel has its advantages. You can galvanize it if you want, but a good paint job done right, which means sandblasting first before painting with a good epoxy primer followed by poly topcoats will do very well.