What is a gooseneck?

A gooseneck is the pivotal swivel fitting on a sailboat that attaches the boom (the horizontal spar) to the mast. It acts as a universal hinge, allowing the boom to swing side to side freely and move up and down to catch the wind.

I am certain that the gooseneck fitted on the masts of the HIKIANALIA is made out of stainless steel or marine-grade aluminum.

I will be fitting the Hikianalia model that I have been working on over the last 3 months with wooden masts and booms. They are of a dimension that makes it impossible to find scaled-down metallic goosenecks. The only alternative was to make them out of wood.

My first instinct was to use lignum vitae wood (tree of life), one of the hardest woods in the world, renowned for its self-lubricating natural oils and for its tendency to turn a green-bluish color resembling oxidized bronze. Cool!

So I made my first pair of miniature goosenecks using that type of wood. This took me about two hours, sanding included. After that, I started to perforate the gooseneck's arms, and immediately one arm broke under the pressure of the drill bit. I had to make a replacement. It took me an additional hour.

When both goosenecks were finally done, I attached the boom to the perforated end of it, secured it with a wooden pin, and slid the circular side of the component down the tapered mast. Wonderful.

Now was the time to lacquer the masts with their attached individual boom.

As soon as I started spraying the first mast, it fell and broke its wooden

gooseneck. I realized that this lignum vitae wood is less solid than I imagined and decided to make a new pair of goosenecks using Eucalyptus robusta, another heavy, solid wood.

I spent a total of 6 hours crafting those little pieces, attaching the boom, and fitting it onto the mast. When scale modeling, it is not the larger parts that take up a lot of time, but more so the small pieces,