Cutting the J pole

[alsantini]

Well, I screwed up....  lowered the mast without the upper halyard and bent the J pole.  Crap.  Anyway, I have straightened it but the is a slight dimple one inch from the end that I cannot get rid of.  Has anyone cut the end of the J pole off?  I know if I take too much off it will pop off the peg just as the mast is upright BUT how about 1.5 inches?  Any words of wisdom other than I should not have done that.  LOL.  Sail On   Al

[Cpy23ecl]

My (uneducated) guess is that 1.5 won't affect it much, but before I'd cut it I'd think about taking it to a machine shop to see if they can do anything.

Unfortunately it's all too easy to do something wrong.  The first time I lowered my mast, I removed the hinge pins along with the hinge lock pin.  Luckily I realized what I had done before I actually started lowering the mast, but that scared the heck out of me.  I was lucky the mast stayed on the stub and was able to get the hinge pins back in.

Fred

[waterwheels]

I tried to raise mast without the halyard so can totally understand how this can happen. Especially with the excitement of getting out on the water or business of the ramp area.

I don't think the little bit should make a huge difference but let us know how you make out Al.

Don

[Tim Gardner]

Hey Al, why not sleeve the dimpled section?

[alsantini]

I realize this topic is long ago forgotten but figured I would post the results.  I played with the pole end for hours finally bringing it to a machine shop in the area.  He fixed while I looked on with an expandable internal pipe wrench.  A couple of twists and turns and voila looks like new.  No charge!!  So, I bought coffee and donuts for the whole crew.  BTW, it works great.  Al

[Cpy23ecl]

Al,

Glad to hear they were able to easily restore the pole end.  I'm always amazed at what a good machinist is able to do.

Fred