More on the prebend and Rig Box

I had a couple of questions on my last post which I thought best to answer with another post

Lets start with the Corex rig box.

There is very little that sticks to Corex so the trick is to use a combination of a glue like Sticks like Sh't and a staple gun. I used two flat sheets of corex and then mounted a wooden frams around it using 30*10mm wood strips. I glued them first flat on a flloor and then used a staple gun every 20cm to reinforce the whole thing. The glue does tend to seperate eventually but the staples hold it all together nicely. There were two small door hinges and some small cabinet clasps to keep it shut. The result is a very lightweight usable rig box. Dimensions are 51cm base *182cm height*16cm top. Email me if you want more details.

Here are the pictures of the box. You can vary the layout as you like. I used round eyes and hooks to support the jibs and clips to support the masts. The left side of the box ccontains the jibs and A mast and main. The rigth side contains the B rig and C rig. The top right section has the rig tension metre. It has served me well for the last two years.

Regarding the prebend

Previously I said I did not like rollers to prebend the mast as they leave hard spots. I should re-phrase that to say I do not like my prebending device which lacked precision and because the wheels were not smooth rolling they left hard spots on the mast bend. Pauls prebend device used wheels but the bearings were smooth and you could roll the aluminium tube easily backwards and forwards and move the central wheel bit by bit to achieve the bend needed.

For the A reg I wanted 15mm bend over 600 from the top of the mast. We marked 100mm from the end of the spar and then 600mm from the very top. We then rolled from the end of the spar to 700mm down. Once we had the 15mm bend measured to the 100mm mark, I then choped off the 100mm and measured everything on the mast down from there. We did the same with the B rig only this time I was looking for 400mm. Best advice for mast bend and set up can be found on the BG site here

The end result was to achieve a straight mast. Here is the result

When I tested the rig at Datchet today it came through with flying colours and delivered good speed and pointing ability.

If anyone has any more questions please do not hesitate to ask.