I wanted to post some pics of a new DIY roller furling setup. I got a lot of ideas from a post on the web that I can't seem to locate now. It's built out of mostly 1/2 inch sch 40 electrical conduit. I used conduit since it is made to be UV resistant as opposed to white PVC pipe. The T had to be gotten from the plumbing section as well as the two parts of the drum. About 25 bucks for the whole thing.

Here is the drum. This is the only part I glued together and even that doesn't absolutely need it. From the bottom it consists of a 1/2 inch cap, small bit of 1/2 pipe to connect, 1/2 male threaded piece, PVC box cap (from electrical dept.) 1/2 inch thread to 1 1/4 adapter, small bit of 1 1/4 to connect it to the next adapter, plate and male adapter, then the 1/2 inch pipe starts.



You can see where the 1/2 pipe starts I actually drilled and chamfered a small stainless (#6 x 1/2) screw rather than gluing. I had done this same design but glued all the pieces together but ended up breaking bits on it while moving the mast around and such. Using a screw does two things; allows me to take it apart and replace bits if needed and makes it slightly more flexible which will hopefully put a little less stress on things and I won't break it! We'll see how it holds up. If it all goes to heck, I can still take the jib off and hank it back on but it has held up rolling things up in about 25mph winds.

Here is the next bit. Basically cut pieces of PVC long enough to go in between the hanks, then cut out a bit of the coupling and pipe about halfway around to give room to get the hank on the fore stay. Then I put a screw in the backside of the coupling (could also be glued). Do this for each hank of course.



And here is the top bit, pretty self explanatory. Using eyebolts with washers, then zip tying the jib top and bottom. The whole thing just spins on the caps on either end, tension on the sail is preset by the zip ties and the pvc pipe between the hanks so you want to get it fairly tight. I also sized it so the caps roll on the swaged ends and not on the stay itself, it will roll smoother and less chance of damaging the stay that way.



Final step, go sailing!