Does anyone know where to source carbon tube for battens? This is for a North formula sail, I believe the tube is 12mm diameter with a 2mm wall. I need it in lengths of about 1.6 metres. Broke the original battens in a piddling little shore break :(
The North importer seems to be uninterested, I've tried several sailmakers who will talk happily about their sails but seem to have taken a vow of silence when it comes to materials, and the one carbon foundry I tracked down only supplies tube in 1m lengths. There's a guy in Switzerland who is happy to ship it to me at great expense, but is nice enough to express puzzlement that I'd need to be sourcing the stuff from Switzerland.
Any pointers greatly appreciated.
prety sure i would have some that length out of gastra sails,where abouts are you, i'm is south oz
@pirrad: I'm in Bris. I'll check the dimensions and post them up. Depending on freight cost it could be a goer.
@Rob11: It's because the original ones are carbon :)
@Sunnyboy: excellent, thanks mate. Pretty pricey stuff now that I look at it, but at least I know where to get it.
Rule of thumb:
"Always keep the good battens out of trashed sails"
(especially big trashed sails)
I've recycled carbon tubes from NP mark IV sails and KA Stealths into Severne Gators and KA Koncepts and they work a treat.
Worth the effort, as battens hardly take up any storage room.
This guy has got what you need.
1/99 Malabar Road, Coogee
NSW, Australia, 2034
(02) 9315 7001
(02) 9315 8534
info@kitesite.com.au
Jaime,
Sailing off the beach and sometimes in some pretty wicked shore break, I have successfully repaired several broken battens without any noticable loss of curve flex.
Get some batten joiners (those plastic bits that join the tube to the solid) and some solid fibreglass rod (the stuff that is at either end of the complete batten). Cut the conical end off the plastic joiner and then cut the solid rod to the length of the two joiners and then sleeve the break with the joiner and rod. Then get some light cloth, mix up some epoxy and wrap the break about 5cm either side of the break. I very rarely tidy up the broken ends of the carbon tube as they usually go back together nicely.
Also try to get the batten the same length of original otherwise you have to modify solid rod at leech end to get maximum tension.
You can get away with sleeving just one plastic joiner (without solid rod) half way either side of break but it's not that harder doing it with two.
Edit - thought a sketch would help
I purchased a bunch of salvaged batten parts including CF tube and ferrules from Jesper at Sail Repair WA.
sailrepairwa.com/2/
You can also order new assembled battens/parts from Sailworks
www.sailworks.com/battens
You will need to determine a) If they are carbon, quite possibly glass and b) if carbon what % they are, 30%, 60% and 100% are used and also if they are extruded vs laminated.
Stiffness will vary considerably and if you use the wrong one it will have an impact the performance of the sail.
Hopefully somebody at North can give you the material spec???
Are you sure they are carbon? they will be all carbon or all glass, pretty sure they done do them like mast layups..
There the only 2 different types of carbon tube battens i have seen, and i have seen a hell of alot,they look like this,
One style you can see the batten is definatley wrapped the ridges of the wrap are obvious.
The second style look alot like the standard tube batten, same color, super smooth, but if you sight down the batten you will see little bands not one solid color the whole way along..
So if its solid super dark flat grey and smooth it's glass, or if it's shiny black and smooth also glass.
If you post a picture of of the batten close up looking down the batten, should be able to tell..
If really lucky may be able to help out with new ones..
Wow, thanks for all the replies. I 've got some homework to do.
As far as I (and the local retailer) can tell, North are out to lunch pretty much permanently, no joy there. But I'm pretty sure these are carbon - they are pretty mangled in places and the fibres are all black. There are no obvious layup ridges, but I would guess laminated rather than pultruded, as there seem to be layers of longitudinal and transverse fibres. Don't know how to tell what %, but if I had to guess I'd say 100% - all the fibres I can see are short and black, and the breaks are all relatively clean without any of the long splits I associate with glass breaks. According to the North web site, they do use glass/carbon mixes, but they don't say where, in what sails, or what %.
I will go and do some measuring and double checking and report back.
OK, measurements and photos:
Definitely 12mm OD, 2mm wall thickness.
Lengths 1688, 1540, 1230, 1410
I'm still guessing it's carbon, but maybe these snaps will make it obvious (to someone, it's not to me).
The second shot is of a piece that I hacksawed in two to get a clean measurement of the wall thickness.
Thanks choco, but those are the guys who only do 1m lengths. I did try to check that with them, but got no response.
OK maybe I am a shonky repairer - or in denial about the importance of tube - but does it really matter?
The whole reason tube is used for the rear section is it doesn't bend much.
But the front solid / tapered flat section does bend.
You could replace it with carbon tube of same dia and it will change the sail characteristics about one p00fteenth - not enough that any average sailor could notice it - surely?
If it is carbon and you replace with carbon - all good
If it is glass and you replace with carbon - it will be a smidge stiffer and the sail may have slightly more forward draft. No big deal.
Or like Sausage says, sleeve them. The tube bends sooo little that adding a sleeve and gluing them together will, again, be a p00fteenth of a millimetre change in curve.
Sorry , this is glass.
Mark, I was thinking the same thing, so I leant on a piece and I can tell you that at 1.6m these tubes bend plenty. Nowhere near as much as a flat batten, but they're a long way from straight under compression. Given that, I would assume the actual curvature matters. These big formula sails have handling properties that border on mystical so I'm loth to mess with it too much. Even though I'm still trying to work my way up to average sailor level :)
AUS4, don't be sorry, that'll save me several hundred bucks!
And Rob11, P.C_Simpson, mr love - you were right, I was wr-wr-wro...possibly mistaken :)
Again, thanks for all the responses, with a bit of luck I'll have this sail back on the water soon.
