Today I finished drilling and sanding all the holes for the rigging and forestay.  Then went about installing the lashing plates.  I started at the masthead because they were easy to access, and went with my original plan which was to tap 3mm bar stock into the lashing plates, pull them through the inside out and use a nut and washer to hold the plate in place for the lashing or loop or whatever.  I did this, and it was no more difficult than installing any other bit of rig hardware that requires screws instead of pop rivets.  I’m not using pop rivets anywhere on my mast.  It’s the “pop” part that bothers me about installing them in composites. 

  

 

This worked fine, but there was something about the process that seemed a bit overboard.  So for the rest of the fittings I’m not going to be screwing them to the inside face.  instead I’ll let the lashing/splice (thinking more splice these days) hold the plates in place.  It will allow some movement on the slack side, but very little and the mold release film inside the mast will keep the plate from chafing the inside.  Basically I’m letting the parts do their thing.  I’ll just have to keep an eye on it for a couple days to see if anything bad happens.  It just has to last for 5,000 miles to pass my standards.

No set screws in this lashing plate? We'll see...

Tomorrow, I’ll move to making a masthead crane fitting and figuring out the 2:1 halyards for the jib and storm jib.

-R