Listening to Lisa Blair presenting her ideas of the past and future, she was talking about building a new boat in volcanic fibres and that triggered my interest. What are these fibres and how good are they??
After some research I found more info about them, and the material is actually called Basalt and the fibres are indeed extracted from the volcanic lava that exists plentiful around our globe. It’s more environmentally friendly as the process of creating the fibres is simpler and less energy consuming than producing fibreglass or Carbon fibre.
Basalt fibres are becoming more used as rebar in construction, as it’s not susceptible to corrosion and have strength characteristics similar to steel. For a boat builder it sits somewhere between fibreglass and carbon fibre in strength and cost. It can also be used with Epoxy resin or Polyester.
As it happens I was planning to install an autopilot on our sailboat RaRa and for that I needed a tiller arm to fit on the rudder stock. The tiller arm needs to be very strong and this part is unfortunately not something Whitworths sells as a stock item. A bronze version could be ordered from the US to the approximate cost of $1200 + shipping. I also contacted a few local people about fabricating one, but it was both expensive and a long lead time to get it done. So, what to do? I decided to make one, using basalt fibres, Epoxy and a core of Oak.
Constructing a simple ‘mold’ out of a bottle with the same diameter as my rudder stock and a piece of chipboard I got going on the balcony of our flat.
I used a 360g woven basalt cloth tape 100mm wide, and at the thickest points there are 15 layers of fibres.
At the time of writing the Autopilot isn’t yet 100% completed and commissioned yet, but hopefully it will prove to be strong enough and not ‘erupt’ at the most inopportune time!
/Niclas S/V RaRa
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