Thank you stewart for sending me the pics.

Hans, your mast isn't so far off the mark is it ?

I see it is fully fitted out with exception of the spi-halyard (4 mm dyneema 15 mtr long section along the mast = 180 grams), (heavy) spreaders ( <1.5 kg ?) and the diamond wires (3 mm dieform together 12 mtr long = 650 grams).

These items add to the tip weight by the following amounts

Spi halyard (7.5/2 * 1/8.5) * 0.180 kg = 0.080 kg
Spreaders (3.0 / 8.5 ) * <1.5 = <0.530 kg
Diamond wires (3.0/8.5 ) * 0.650 = 0.230 kg

total add <0.84 kg to your measured tipweight of 8.0 kg making it overall <8.84 kg

Still more then my own mast but not too bad.

Valtteri was reporting tipweights beyond 10 kg.

Opting for lightweight carbon spreaders (like Phill has done) will shave off 0.350 kg from the tipweight and thus end up at 8.5 kg tipweight. I can envision that the added 0,9 kg relative to my own fitted mast is caused by the die widening (going from 1.6 mm wallthickness to 1.7 mm). Also note that my own mast section is heavier then Phills which is even older then mine.

If the same original die is still used then a couple of hundred masts have been made by it already. VWM/Falcon have used about 80 of them and AHPC about 400 (325 Taipans mast+ 80 Vipers); smaller batches went to Dynautic and Formula catamarans (Aussie Blade) and some 15% is disguarded or used as beams because they are not straight. I can easily believe that over 600 Superwing masts have been made over the years. Maybe that can account for 0.1 mm wear on the die ? (0.1 mm is the same as the thickness of a regular 80 grams A4 sheet of paper.)

Wouter