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Stainless Bowsprit
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Patrick Twohig
San Diego, CA
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February 27, 2015 - 5:39 pm
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 I'm going to be replacing the bowsprit on my DE38 with a piece of stainless box tubing, similar to this boat here: http://sundownersailsagain.com.....ing-boats/.  Unfortunately, my local metal supplier can only give me a 20' length.  However, if I bought the full piece i could easily make a second bowsprit just like mine.  I figure somebody on here may want or need a new one.

Anybody interested?

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Scott Carle
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March 1, 2015 - 8:36 pm
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I have that project coming up. I have thought about going the stainless tube route also. However I'm in the cash crunch right now so will have to pass :)

lots of pictures as you do it. :)

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Scott Carle DE38 Cutter s/v Valkyr
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Patrick Twohig
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March 2, 2015 - 1:57 am
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Yeah, I'm having trouble trying to select the thickness and the size of the material.  I'm looking at 5"x5" with 0.25" thickness, but I'm thinking I may want to go one size up in the thickness.  I have to take some more measurements.

The price of the material that I had quoted wasn't as much as I thought.  Roughly half of what onlinemetals wanted for 316L stainless.

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Scott Carle
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March 2, 2015 - 9:51 am
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where are you getting it and how much is it? I would think that 1/4 inch is thick enough. Remember that the force is supposed to be in compression on the bowsprit.

 

I found this quote online about a replacement bowsprit for a westsail 32. This bowsprit is made from tubing that is 4" square, with a .120" wall http://www.westsail.com/b-rails.htm

So 1/4 inch thick is twice as thick as what they are using on a 32 ft boat that is similar to our boats.

actually follow this link and you can get some information the construction of this bowsprit. Might be worth while giving the guy a call and kibitzing with him. He might be able to give you some advice on wall thickness for a 38 ft boat. If you could use the .120 wall thickness instead of the .25 wall thickness you would probably pay close to half the price for the tube as it would be half the weight. Just a thought.

How heavy is the 1/4 inch thick section of steel tubing compared to the wood bowsprit?

 

here is another link.. I converted the measurements and they are using a .120 thickness on a 4 inch tube for a bowsprit for a 39 ft boat.. bowsprit is only about 27 inches long according to the measurements he gave which doesn't sound right to me.

http://www.ybw.com/forums/show.....l-bowsprit

Here is a writeup on our website for a DE32, however it is thin on details of the wall thickness.

http://downeasteryachts.com/in.....emmet-de32

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Scott Carle DE38 Cutter s/v Valkyr
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Patrick Twohig
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March 18, 2015 - 8:02 pm
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My DE38's bowsprit is 7' - 8' feet long.  It starts at 5" - 6" on the aft end and tapers to 4".  It looks like it's three pieces of wood, stacked horizontally...which is exactly the opposite of what one of the previous articles said about how to make a bowsprit.

Anyhow, the strength calculation for compression force is pretty simple, I just had to dust off my old strengths of materials textbooks :)

The other issue, if your boat is like mine, then the anchor rode hangs from the bowsprit.  This means that when anchored in waves, the bowsprit is behaving like a cantilever beam as well.  It has some support from the forestay, but not much.  Obviously, there's some torsion load on there as well, so these are all things to consider.

The 1/4" according to my calculations is heavier by quite a lot.  I've had a hard time finding anything less than 1/4" thick walls.

I think for the price, I may just go with thicker walled aluminum.  The rest of the spars are aluminum on the boat.

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Scott Carle
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March 19, 2015 - 9:28 am
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Aluminum would seem to to be the ultimate material for this. Metal strong but much lighter than wood or steel. If you can afford to have someone fabricate it then your golden.

I would go with steel simply because I could fabricate it myself. I have the equipment to weld steel and it is relatively forgiving of a decent amateurs' skills. I don't have the equipment or the skill to weld aluminum. If I had the money to spare I would choose aluminum myself.

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Scott Carle DE38 Cutter s/v Valkyr
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Patrick Twohig
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March 22, 2015 - 2:03 am
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Scott, what's your welding gear?

I've got a Miller Multimatic with a Spoolgun and it's been great for aluminum so far.

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Scott Carle
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March 22, 2015 - 9:17 am
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I've have three welders but they are on the low end..

The nicest is a Lincoln 200 amp 220 volt SMAW welder. One of the old basic ones. Never fails but its just a stick welder.

next is a small 110 volt wire feed welder, chicago electric etc.. no gas ability just flux core wire. I pretty much hate that thing. I can weld with it but my welds always look like shit.

Third is my newest one that I love to death .. I got a small 90 or 80 amp, stick inverter welder. It is about the size of a loaf of bread and I can only weld thin stuff with it (maybe 8th inch or just a little thicker at most) but it welds that smooth as butter. I got it for on the boat to weld up some of my stainless projects I fabricated such as monitor mounts, microwave mount etc... I can run it through the inverter on the boat as it is just a 110 volt unit. Honestly there isn't much on the boat that I don't think I could attempt with it. It will weld both + or - polarity. I think I got it for under 100 dollars at harbor freight.

On my still to buy list are a plasma cutter and propane or acetylene cutting torch setup. Probably propane as it is really easy and cheap to get. It would be nice to have something I can heat metal up with to bang on it as well as cutting stuff up and brazing when needed. I have thought about one of the combination plasma cutter/inverter welders as a sorta all in one unit.

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Scott Carle DE38 Cutter s/v Valkyr
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Scott Carle
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March 22, 2015 - 9:22 am
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Actually I am mostly comfortable welding mild steel and stainless but have no experience with aluminum. If I had the money to pay someone to weld up an aluminum bowsprit and all the stuff attached and around it, I might take the money and buy a welder for aluminum as well as take a class on it. I bet it would come out close to the same cost :) I figure by the time all was said and done a decent shop would want 2500 to 4000 dollars to do the job.

I got a great deal on my aluminum hard dodger frame at about 2400 dollars but the guys that did it told me they would never do another for less than four grand. :)   They kept coming up with better ways to do it and that would get me to come up with an enhancement. It is a work of art but a lot went into it.

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Scott Carle DE38 Cutter s/v Valkyr
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Patrick Twohig
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March 24, 2015 - 6:03 pm
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You built the dodger out of aluminum?  Or just the frame?

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Scott Carle
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March 25, 2015 - 9:49 am
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Just the frame.

I came up with a list of goals for what we wanted in a dodger.

  1. I could see over it standing at the helm and under while seated
  2. It cleared any running rigging so nothing would hang on it.
  3. It was strong enough that you could clip to it or hold onto hand rails that bolt to the top of it and it would support a 200+ lb guys weight under extreme conditions.
  4. It extended back farther than the old dodger to give better cover of the companionway from the rain.
  5. It could be used to catch water for usage in our tanks,
  6. It had a large surface area to mount solar panels to.
  7. That we could enclose the entire thing in mosquito netting and isinglass so that we could turn the entire top of the cabin into a play pen for the babies/toddlers and or sleep up there ourselves.
  8. Also a built in guide to keep the boom from hitting the solar panels or that we could bungee or tie the boom to to secure it.

Lastly and the one  goal we couldn't meet was that we could move the traveler onto it. To mount the traveler there was just awkward based on the height it needed to be. With a traveler there, we had to lower the height to the point that it was unrealistic to get under and out from under easily for access to the companionway etc... Also to build in the structural support into the dodger for the loads of the traveler aesthetically just looked bad.

Even without the traveler, by the time all was said and done it you still have to duck down quite a bit to get under the aft edge of the dodger and to the companionway.

As far as the actual dodger top, I fabricated it from 1/4 inch luan with glass and epoxy on both sides, all edges with an oak lip wrapped in epoxy and glass, every corner has its own custom built in drain that a hose attaches to that can lead water to where you need it. It is held on by bolting the full length hand rails and the boom protector over it to the frame. We welded in large matching surfaces to the frame so that the feet of the rails are pinched between and held together with about 36 1/4 inch stainless bolts. all holes in the dodger top were pre-drilled filled with epoxy and the drilled again just through the epoxy. It took me months part time to build the top but it came out very nice. we glued 13 25 watt thin film solar panels to the top of the dodger for a total of 325 watts there. You can jump up there and safely walk on the panels also. that was a design goal that evolved as we got into the project. The dodger is so large that access to the boom was made difficult if the boom was centerlined.

Materials for the dodger cover were around 500 with the wood being around 100 dollers. Epoxy and glass cost a bit :) lots of bolts to buy :) Solar panels I got a deal on for 325 dollars on ebay. Misc stuff used to put it all together, sand paper, etc... about another 200

By the time was all said and done it cost about 3200 to 3600 $ roughly. I didn't have the budget for it and didn't intend it to cost so much but honestly it seems about right given normal job creep and lack of decent expectations of what the job would cost. To have someone else do the whole job I think it would have run about 6000+

Other than wanting more head room under it which would require raising the boom we love it. It came out great. The height is very livable and perfectly fits the esthetic's and lines of the boat in my opinion. The guy that welded it up for me was not only a welding artist but added small touches in changing some of the straight lines I had designed to curved ones that visually made a 1000 % difference in the looks. He used to design and build fishing towers  for Grady White. It was funny There was a Grady White about 5 slips down from me and when he was working on mine he talked with the owner and based on the age of the boat said the tower on it was one of the ones he head designed back in the day when working for them.

I know way more information than you asked for. Smile

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Scott Carle DE38 Cutter s/v Valkyr
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Patrick Twohig
San Diego, CA
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April 28, 2015 - 3:13 am
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Here's my progress on the bowsprit so far...

BowspritImage Enlarger

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