The past couple of days have been rainy, so I took advantage of that to have an actual weekend.  Today however, beautiful weather, and beautiful weather only means one thing for my campaign,  work day. 

     I started the day experimenting with some 6mm carbon pins that I was going to use as lashing points within the mast for the standing rigging.  I have a spare section of my mast to play with for this, so I did a little destructive testing.  I tied one end of the loaded part to a tree and the other to my truck and put it in reverse.  All three carbon pins shattered.  There goes another great idea. 

You can see the mast section starting to fail.

Changed the angle of the load to mimic the real life angle of the load.

 

   The mast section and G-10 backing plates were in fine condition though, so I decided to try something else.  Above are pictures of the prototype lashing termination.  It is a solution that I am confident will work for the new mast.  Not only is it lighter and stronger than my original solution, but it’s also easier to make.  I’ll include pictures of the internal parts tomorrow.

-Ryan