Just noticed that carbon fibre masts are being shown on "how it's made". It's going on right now. May be of interest. May have been covered allready. I'm on the east coast so maybe some of you can check it out. It looks like big keel boat stuff, but it's still interesting.

Dammit, I missed it, I got on during the pistons part.

Yeah, I saw it too, that one mast was huge!!

I've had that one stored in Tivo for about a year now.

So Jake, for those of us who missed it, how do they do it? Do they fasion a male mold out of wood, then wrap it with carbon pre-preg cloth, bake it, etc? Or do they have a female mold, spray it in and vacume bag, then bake? Or something else entirely?

It looked like a metal male mold. They have a spinner on each side and it spins as they wrap it with prepeg carbon. Then they stick it in the monster autoclave and pull it out. When it cools the metal seperates from the carbon and they pull it out. Looks pretty easy. My guess is the hard part is putting the track and fittings on. They didn't show that part.

This one looked like a 10 or 12" aluminum mandrel that was Looooooong and mounted, like Mike says, on a pivot on each end. After spraying it with silicon release, they wrap prepreg carbon strips around it in various directions - the first several spiraling up the mast. After each run with the prepreg, they wrap it tightly with stretch wrap (like used in packaging) to squeeze it in place, then remove the stretch wrap, and add another layer of carbon...repeat. Then it gets peel ply, vacuum padding, and a long continues plastic bag / tube pulled over it's length and sealed at the ends. Suction cups attached, vacuum pulled, and then it goes into a huge autoclave where it is heated in stages under pressure (the additional pressure in the autoclave adds on to the pressure achieved through vacuum since you can only get "so much" pressure with a complete vacuum). The staged heat first allows the prepeg to liquify and then high heat makes it cure. Once cooked, it comes out and is allowed to cool. The aluminum expands more than the cured carbon product and appears to be removed from the center with only a little force.