Bowsprit / Secret Weapon

Well the bowsprit is not the secret weapon of the title the portable swamp cooler shown below is!

This weekend the temperature got up to 108 degrees F which in short is: HOT!!! So Friday night my wife and I hit the Home Depot / Lowes circuit and purchased the portable swamp cooler. I tried it out this weekend and it made a huge difference - As long as it is blowing directly on you it makes working in the garage bearable!

Well enough about that! This weekend my goal was to shape the bowsprit. So first step was to figure out how I was going to plane in the additional faces. As with the boom I took the bowsprit in the house and my wife and I sat down and marked up the centers of all eight faces followed by the other eight faces for the initial non tapering part of the bowsprit (the aft end). Once I got to the tapered part things where not quite cut and dried since even though the tapered end had eight faces it is closer to square than an octagon.  So I before finalizing my "planing" lines I decided to get the end closer to an octagon so out came the hand plane!

Bowsprit Ready for Shaping

Tapered End Planed to an Octagonal Shape

Once that was done it was pretty easy to figure out my "planing" lines and cut in the additional 8 faces using my trusty No. 5 plane.

Well it turns out that it took a little bit more effort to do the shaping on this spar than what I initially anticipated. The main reason behind this is that you build the spar using the same dimensional pieces as the mast with the exception that it is actually a couple of millimeters narrower in diameter. So after I used the box sander to get it to the initial round shape I used my electronic micrometer to check the diameter. As expected it was 63 mm vs 61 mm. So out came the hand plane to take off the extra material! I alternated between the hand plane and micrometer to make sure I did not take off to much material and also to make sure it was round. This particular spar has to fit through a hole in the bow transom so it's a little bit more critical that it is perfectly  round!

Finished Product!

Next step for this particular spar is to wrap both ends with fiberglass followed by a good sanding/epoxying/varnishing!

Next Steps will be either the fiberglassing this spar, the connector tube between the top/bottom mast or the sail track - We will see!

Shaping the Boom

After taking a weekend off to go to California I decided to tackle the boom next.

During the weekday my daughter was kind enough to help me scribe the lines on the boom to locate the center of each face and to also add the planing lines to go from eight faces to 16. This effort definitely took some time and it was nice to have someone help me! It was also something I ended up doing on the living room floor which was also nice!

Additional Faces Scribed In

Once again I brought out my trusty number 5 plane and planed in the extra eight faces. I decided to forgo the power planer on this exercise since there really was not a whole lot of wood to take off and I wanted to have better control over what was happening.

Once the additional eight faces where planed in I decided to build a couple of supports from scrap pieces of wood so that I could clamp the boom to the saw horses and have it spin freely for the sanding process.

Again I used the boxed sander to get it to a round shape. It's pretty close to round right now. My plan is to finish it up with 100, 150 and 220 grit sand paper and hopefully get any imperfections out at that point.

I need to build the cleats for the boom which I think I may make out of some spare mahogany that I have left over.

Things are heating up in Arizona so I am getting relegated to working in the mornings before it gets to obnoxiously hot. Still on the agenda is shaping the bowsprit and building the sail track from plans provided by François Marti who funnily enough built hull #39! I also have to build the fiberglass tube that connects the lower mast with the top mast - still thinking on that one!

Top Mast

I decided to tackle the top mast section next. I figured it that it would be a logical progression that way I can get one of the spars somewhat done!

As with the mast I started out by using the power planer to remove all the excess epoxy and to smooth out all of the faces.

Top Mast ready for shaping

I then followed up by figuring out the additional faces that I wanted to plane into the top mast to get it closer to round. Unlike the lower mast it was a little trickier since the majority of it is tapering. I then followed up with the #5 plane and cut in the additional faces and finished by using the boxed sander to round it off. It's interesting to note that although the power plane works great to clean up all of the epoxy mess, it is still better, and for that matter more satisfying to use the hand plane to do some of the detail work. All in all the two make a great combination!

Once I got the desired shape I got the mitre saw out and cut the excess material from both the top and bottom masts.

I then butted up the lower mast to the top mast to compare their shape and get them ready to cut the recess for the fiberglass connector tube. I used a small hand plane to even them up.

Since I had quite the saw dust mess going on I decided to make a bigger mess and clean up the boom and bowsprit. Even though the power planer works great it definitely makes a giant mess and I figured it would be good to get it over and done with! To make things even more messier the "flakes" of epoxy that it creates seem to be electrostatically charged and clings to everything!

Bowsprit cleaned up and ready for shaping

Boom cleaned up Also!

I am now ready to shape the boom and bowsprit!

Finished Shaping The Mast

Finished shaping the mast after work today. All that was left to do was make the bottom 300 mm round so that it would fit the mast step.

Similar to the rest of the mast I marked out the additional faces and proceeded with a small hand plan to get it closer to round.

As you can see it worked out pretty good. I finished up with 80 grit sand paper in the boxed sander -it definitely does a great job!

My plan is to move either to the boom or the top mast next. I'll worry about doing the finish sanding on the mast once I have the mast sleeve built and the sail track epoxied on.