Mast Conduit Conundrum

[bletso]

I have removed all my mast wiring and some of the conduit, but.... as you can see the manner in which the OEM secured the conduit in the mast seems to unique. Any ideas on how to remove these anchors. They have to have been put in place and then welded. They did such a good job that when I sanded the mast I can't find them from the outside!

Perhaps I can make a car to mount the multimaster to and cut them. I would make a snag but with my luck they would break in the wrong spot. I need to put in a larger conduit.

[model 10]

How are you going to attach the new conduit?

[UNCIVILIZED]

I'd suggest leaving in place, and just adding a new PVC conduit along side it. Because no matter how cleanly you cut the anchors to the old one, there will still be short bits of them sticking up. And they'll have some degree of sharpness to them, which can & will damage anything inside of the mast. Including halyards, the new conduit, wiring, etc.

But if you "must" remove it, you could build a long, towable car who's shape matches the inside of the mast section, except that where it meets the mast in the vicinity of the conduit, you place a blade akin to a chisel/cold chisel. So that as you pull the car through the mast, it cuts the conduit free of it's anchors. And you'd need to build rollers into the car on all sides but for the one with the chisel, so as to facilitate it's easy movement through the extrusion.

Worst case "read the instructions", meaning contact the mast's manufacturer, & or, ask a couple of riggers.

[catsketcher]

I would leave them there. With halyards and other conduit in there I would hate there to be any sharp points inside. You may be able to reuse them or ignore them. You won't ignore them if they cut your halyards.

[bletso]

Nothing in the mast except conduit and the wires inside it. All my halyards are external. Leaving the old conduit in place is not a good option as at least one of the U's is broke loose about 30 ft up and allows the conduit to move about. The larger conduit will allow me to also place the vhf cable in the run. What they had done was tape pieces of foam along the vhf cable to mitigate slapping and ran it up the center of the mast.

Mast manufacturer? The boat is a 1979 Globe made in Taiwan

The mud in the mast was caused by a couple floods and the mast being knock to the ground. I didn't catch the mud until much later when I removed the foot.

AS far attaching the new conduit, probably fix with rivets every 3 ft or so.

[bletso]

The solution turned out to be simple. I tried a cold chisel on the end of 1/2 pipe with only limited success on the first of the U shaped welded in straps. I then made a special piece to try and jerk them out form above. No luck. In the end a sort of epiphany. I took lengths of 1 inch electrical conduit and slipped the existing conduit inside of it and just rammed it up to the offending U assemblies, smack with a hammer and voilà, everything was free.

I wrestled for two days before I came up with the solution and in 20 minutes the job was done!!!

[maxingout]

Well done. I will keep this in mind when I pull my mast and run new wires.