July 2005. A conversation with Hayden.

The Cyclotron.

Chris took Hayden to see the Cyclotron on Friday morning. It's up in the Berkeley hills. Chris has been leaving his fingerprints on the machine for 5 years (probably not literally, I suppose they dust.) You could say Chris is a Cyclotron Scientist.

His father got him into the work.

In Buidling 56, they make radioactive isotopes for medical use.
They shoot the atoms around until the correct weight ratio is reached, which is also a larger circumference. It hits the collector, they count it and sell it in mCu(?) vials.

Oxy-18 --> Fluorine-18 --> Cl-18? Ask Chris to explain!

Rigging.

Hayden's mainstay goes to the spars, not the top. The runner is the 6-part tackle... (ask.) Something about the "seat and lazarette" (stays?) pull against the pull of the mainstay. If they gave way (or "went up") the back stay would be enough.

There is a double forestay; also the jibstay goes to the upper spar. Therefore it, uh..."takes strain backfield"? (ask.) The pulls on the mast must counteract one another, so the main won't go down!

The shrouds go up to tangs at the base of the spreaders. George's boat has hooks, but a tang handles more force. Hooks take less load.

I ask Hayden about galvanized steel, which he had once mentioned to the tax collectors as if it were a liability. Actually it is anything but.

You want to use "the prevalent metal" (one kind) on a boat, to avoid the galvanic battery problem. Even Aldebaran's armature (the hull innards?) is made of galvanized wire mesh, galvanized chain clates, all zinc plated.

*Anneal: When metal is worked, the crystals move out of alignment, contributing to hardness and brittleness. Annealing realigns the crystals, and softens the metal. The process involves heating to a critcal temperature, then slowly cooling (ferrous steels) or quickly quenching (non-ferrous brass, bronze, silver, gold, aluminum, etc.) This allows the metal crystals to realign into their more relaxed state.

By the way, if you don't know what galvanized steel is, you're in luck, because I didn't know, so I asked. Galvanized steel is simply zinc-plated steel. The best is "hot-dip" where the steel is lowered into molten zinc in baskets, like you might wet a basket of clothes. You can even galvanize tempered steel, but you have to take care not to anneal(*) it.

On the Nobility Scale, gold is at the top, down to zinc, so to keep metals from coroding, keep them all his metals are near the bottom of the nobility scale. In fact, any bare steel tends to run a little current through it, which is enough to plate the cut ends with zinc, galvanizing it! (ask about "Zinc creep does NOT cause corrosion pockets"?)

Worming and Parcelling.

The worming and parcelling over galvanized steel-coat wire, with tarring string in the groove (worming) and 2 layers of friction tape (tar based) wind it really tight, with serving string outside, wrap up tight enough to squeeze the tar from the friciton tape into the grooves. This is nearly impermeable to weather!

The top shrouds keep rusting, and Haydon wishes he'd wormed and parcelled the shrouds all the way to the top. But he'd have to take them down to do it, and anyway you can't once the rust has started. Someday Haydon will have to take them down and cut new cables. They're "potted in zinc smelter sockets" -- sockets filled with molten zinc, which grabs the splayed wires. Some day he will have to do it, but not now. (ask? how many years.)

The back stays have worming and parcelling right up to the top.

"I thought I"d put a tensioner up, but found it was unnecessary, the ___ didn't need it... the nice thing about it is that you can lash the ratlin to it without slipping.

Ratlin? What's that?

The ratlin is the ladder to the mast, and it's all wormed and parcelled. The stairs are just rope that is backspliced, with a small amount of taper from the top to the bottom, maybe a 4" taper from the shrouds (spreaders?) to the deck.

(Haydon about, "I measured 'free' space to put ratlin in, a truncated pyramid, made up gauge, rungs, kept all math and work." I drew a diagram of a trapezoid hanging from the bottom of a T.)