I am also waiting on the sheave for my top mast which I ordered a couple of weeks ago. Interesting to note the sheave specified on the plans has been discontinued! The closest sheave that I was able to find that came close to matching the dimensions is the Ronstan RF580 which is made out of nickel.
As stated in an earlier post I am using plans provided to me by François Marti (http://www.pidgikit.fr). He used a 8 mm dia. router bit for his sail track which I was unable to source here in Arizona. The closest I could come to it was 3/8" (9.5mm) therefore, I modified his width dimensions by a couple of mm to maintain the same wall thickness.
As with most of these projects the first step was to go to Home Depot and get an 8' long piece of 3/4" Poplar that was 5.5" wide. I ran it through the thickness planer to get it down to 14 mm per the sketch of the sail track. I then proceeded to rip three 36 mm pieces and had just enough left over to rip a 10mm wide piece for the thumbcleats.
First order of business was to get the thumbcleats out of the way. This I accomplished using my sled that I had built to do the scarf joints on the mast.
I ended up making an extra set just in case I mess something up!
Next step was to get the router table set up and to run the three boards through it. On one of the boards I cut a small section off it so that I could use it as a test piece for the router.
Can you say trim moulding anyone?
After I ran it through the router I followed up with a coat of epoxy.
What you cant see in the picture is the smoke coming out of my epoxy cup. As warm as things are right now I have about 5 or 6 minutes before the whole batch goes south!
My goal is to apply 2 more coats of epoxy with a light sanding between each coat. Once I am done with that I will rip the short piece in half so that I can epoxy it together, and I will epoxy the two long pieces together!
No comments:
Post a Comment