by David N. Goodchild

TOAD HALL is a gaffer (god bless him) and gaffers need mast hoops. Mast hoops have traditionally been made of long thin slats of steam-bent oak riveted together. This doesn't much help us small boat sailors however, since the sizes we need are much smaller than would be found on a Grand Banks Schooner. Something else is needed!

I make mine in three different ways. I started out by cutting some Maple veneers I happened to have on hand into two-inch strips, soaking them in hot water and then binding them up with duct tape with the grain arranged to be lengthwise around the hoop. This formed them into a tight spiral when they had dried. It is necessary to soak or steam any veneer that you might plan to use, since it does not like to bend in this direction and mast hoops with the grain arranged vertically are of course worthless. I cut the veneer stock into two-inch strips in order to be able to bend them more easily after soaking and in order to have a manageable size. Each two-inch strip was then cut in half and sanded to produce two identical mast hoops.

I had a piece of steel pipe slightly larger than the diameter of TOAD's mast so I set them up on this. It was fairly simple to do, but the first two were the hardest!

First, I cut the base lamination carefully to size, closing it around the steel mandrel. Then, I placed the roughly cut second lamination closely around the first and marked it for cutting, allowing a little space for the epoxy. After satisfying myself that the fit was ok I applied the epoxy and clamped up the two laminations with two very large hose clamps; (you will probably need to go to a plumbing supply store to find these as I did). The reason the first two are the hardest is that the epoxy makes them very slippery and you are trying to squeeze them together, arrange the butt joint so it doesn't overlap the one beneath it and put on the hose clamps all at the same time! Once this is done though, repeating the operation one lamination at a time is a piece of cake.

My Maple was 1/16" in thickness and I used six for each hoop for a total thickness of 7/16" (including epoxy). The finished diameter was 5 3/8". A few coats of varnish and I was done.

After I had made most of the hoops in the above manner, I happened to see a working skipjack at one of the Havre de Grace Museum's Classic Boat shows. This had mast hoops made of slices of PVC pipe. What a country!

The owner of this workboat had not even bothered to wipe off the nomenclature from the pipe with a little acetone. Nevertheless, it occurred to me that this would be an ideal method for very quickly making quite attractive mast hoops. To be attractive however, a little more needs to be done to them than was done by the owner of the skipjack.

Firstly, wipe off the nomenclature before you slice off the pieces of pipe. The size of the pipe and the size of the hoop is entirely up to you. PVC pipe comes in increments from 1/8" up to 16" so you can certainly find what you are looking for. Then take a 1/8" rounding over bit and your router (or drill press on high speed if you don't have a router) and round over all four edges. You're done!

Someone commented to me when I first reported on this in THE SMALL CRAFT ADVISORY that the PVC would be destroyed by UV in a single summer. I checked with the manufacturers and they were adament that PVC is not affected by UV. For further testimony, I asked Bill Menger of Menger Cats at last year's Annapolis Sailboat Show how his fared (he makes his in exactly this way.) He says he has been using them for years and personally knows of one set that is ten years old! No problems, ever.

One final finishing touch!

I like the look of wooden hoops and I also like the contrast between varnished wood and the white PVC. I am going to take a piece of PVC pipe and make some spare hoops for TOAD. But before I slice it, I am going to contact cement a layer of veneer around it and then epoxy a second layer over that. Since the PVC takes the load I can use the veneer with the grain vertical to the hoop to make it easier. After the epoxy sets up I will slice off the hoops and then just round the inner edge (the side that goes next to the mast) of the hoop for a finished look.