Dan's Blog: Measure Twice and Cut Once, Or Is That Measure Once and Cut Twice?

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Measure Twice and Cut Once, Or Is That Measure Once and Cut Twice?

This weeks project was to replace the head foil on the boat. Head foils are plastic extrusions that clip over the rod headstay that runs from the bow to the top of the mast. The head foils have two grooves for the luff tape of the jib to go to the top of the mast. The luff (front edge) of the jib is held securely in the head foil. Two grooves allow us to run a new jib up one of the grooves before dropping the other when we change sails. The old head foil was getting brittle from age and the top was cracking. Time to change, this equipment does not last forever.

So, yesterday, I started the project. It went fast. The old foil came off easy. Remove the stainless feeder and pry the foil off the headstay. Then pull it down and off the stay. I had help for this. Then came the hard part: measuring the new foil and cutting it. The new foil comes out of the box like a corkscrew. I lost my help, so I taped the tape measure to the foil. I had already measured the boat and sails many times and knew that I wanted the new foil longer than the old.

I cut the new foil, fit and drilled for the upper band and started snapping the new foil onto the stay. It goes slow with only 6-12 inches snapped on at a time. With over 44feet of foil it takes a while. Snap on a few feet and push up the stay. The good news was that I did not cut the head foil too short, the bad news was that it was longer that I had intended and it can only be cut at the top, not the bottom.

So today, I removed the new headfoil, cut 7 inches off and reinstalled. Finished up by taping the bottom spacer and installing the prefeeders.

Now was that measure once and cut twice and it was still to short or measure twice and cut once and it was still too long? In this case better to measure twice and cut twice and end up with the right length.