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Calypso 16 Hinged Step


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I often have trouble with my mast, especially getting it down, I nearly killed my friend on sunday as I was lowering it as it slipped and fell to the ground. No damage done. So I decided to make some sort of hinge like every other cat in the world has, so that the mast base remains connected to the mast step during raising and lowering.

 

Last week I tried to get the mast base off the mast so i could look at raising and lowering it without the whole mast attached but after 30 years in place it wasn't coming out.

 

So yesterday I came up with the idea of making a cast of my mast base. I got some silicone grease on it and covered it in putty, 1 hour later I had a nice mold. I lined it with glad wrap and filled it with more putty. 1 hour later I had a replica mast base (well, the glad wrap stuffed it a bit but good enough for my purposes). This afternoon in the stinking hot weather I began drilling some aluminium I had lying around to try make a swiveling hinge. I have the holes in the wrong places for now, but as far as I can see it will work once I get the holes in the right place. Hopefully I can finish on saturday when the weather cools down in time to give it a shot with the mast on sunday. Stay tuned...

 

Some photos here - 

prototype hinge

prototype hinge

Making a mold

Mold and cast

 

Also, a bit of Calypso action from the weekend here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqLzor23NVs

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