Wooden headsail furler?

[Gerald]

My boat is equipped with a mail sail furler and the boom is made from wood. Just wondering if headsail furlers were ever made from wood?
Gerald Niffenegger

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Yes, they were, in small boats, around 100 years ago, but they were abandoned because they were very unreliable; the wooden roller would fail, usually, at the point where the drum was screwed to it. The Wykeham Martin gear, which is a furling, not reefing, gear, where the headsail rolls up on its own luff wire, replaced them.

Wooden booms for roller reefing mainsails are quite another matter; the diameter of the boom is so much greater that it can be quite reliable. They were standard offshore racing equipment up to the 1960s, and were very often used on working sailing craft many years before that. I have one, and find it excellent.

[Gerald]

The Wykeham-Martin site is great! I want one of everything they have.
Again ........ I have used the wrong term. My real question was "has anyone ever made a reefing system, for the headsail, from wood"? Learning terms in Portuguese as well as English and sometimes German puts my brain near overload!
If a person had the Wykeham-Martin gear coupled with a wooden tube instead of aluminum it might be a nice looking rig! http://www.classicmarine.co.uk/asp/product.asp?product=294&ph=cat
Gerald Niffenegger

[bainbridgeisland]

Originally posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett:
...but they were abandoned because they were very unreliable; the wooden roller would fail, usually, at the point where the drum was screwed to it. ... I have seen old drawings of roller furling headsails from 100 years ago without a drum screwed on. They were made from a wooden spar. The spar was made in 2 pieces with a groove in the middle for the head stay. The two pieces of the spar appeared to be lashed together with marlin or something like it. The sails were permanently attached to the spar. The furling line simply wrapped around the base of the spar. The base swelled somewhat where the furling line attached.

I don't remember where I saw the drawings for this rig. It was 20 years ago. The boat was about 20 feet long and 6 feet wide with a transom stern. It had a small house similar to what a canoe yawl would carry.

Since there was no furling drum, there must have been additional reasons they didn't become popular. No doubt, such a system was relatively heavy. This would hurt stability and performance. Also, small headsails are easy to hand without a furler. Thus, there was probably not much gain for the complexity.

I think such a furler would wear a lot where the head stay exits the furler. For longevity, a high density bearing would be needed. I don't remember seeing anything like this on the drawing.