I am in the process of researching this right at the moment.

Selden spars are produced in Sweden and dressed out in Charleston, SC.
Shipping a bunch of spars from Sweden to Charleston in a container cost
about 1/10 what shipping an individual spar "break bulk" cargo. The maximum
length you can put in a 40' container is 39'6". If you order a custom mast
(and specify no splices you pay an outrageous price and it gets shipped
break bulk. If a production builder orders a couple of dozen masts they get
shipped in containers.

That's why I think I will have my spars made in Michigan. :-)
--
Glenn Ashmore

I'm building a 45' cutter in strip/composite. Watch my progress (or lack
there of) at: http://www.rutuonline.com
Shameless Commercial Division: http://www.spade-anchor-us.com

wrote in message
...
Why would a company like Selden tell me that they can only get 40 feet
length extrusion? Shipping could be one of the reason?
The brand new Hunter 33 I saw has a splice above the roof top. When one
of our club member drop his mast (Hunter) it broke in two parts. So when
I saw this new Hunter with a spliced mast and pop rivets It gave me food
for thought. They only other time I saw pop rivets on a sliced mast was
when my friend got dismast and had to repair it with an internal sleeve,
epoxy and pop rivets.
I am not all that convince that all mast above 40 feet are sliced. Beside
Hunter I wonder who is making new sailboats with a spliced mast?

"Rosalie B." wrote in message
...
Frank Boettcher wrote:

On Tue, 04 Jul 2006 19:14:01 GMT, wrote:

When I noticed a pop rivetted butt join on the mast of a new boat I
suspected a mast repair job? When asking the US mast manufacturing
company
as to why a pop rivetted butt joint was present on a 45 feet long new
mast,
they replied that the longest aluminium extrusion available was 40 feet
long. They also stated that it was standard practice in the industry to
butt
joint the length of a mast after 40 feet. They said that their masts
were
elongated by inserting an internal sleeve and securing the joint with
pop
rivets. They also mentioned that other manufacturers were using butt
welding
technique instead of pop rivets.

Maybe this is standard practice but it was an eye opener for me. As
anyone
notices that before?

It's been many years, but I used to work in an aluminum extrusion
plant. We certainly were not limited to 40' max length.

Frank

On our type of boats, the limiting factor was shipping not
manufacture. The manufacturer used whatever they could get the best
price on and there are many different mast profiles that they used.
Some of the boats have the two piece mast and some do not.

Most of our masts were either 56 feet or 65 feet above the waterline,
and they were keel stepped so you need to add another 7 feet or so
onto that.