Monday, December 15, 2008

Mast, boom, & gaff

Scarfing the mast lengths was fairly easy. I set up a simple jig in the chop saw and cut the scarfs. The only thing I had to be careful about was the direction of the scarf and at what end of the length of wood. The scarfs must alternate so none line up with each other. If I could find full length I certainly would have used it. But this will do. Gluing was a bit trickier. I glued and wrapped the pieces in wax paper to keep it from sticking to the table. The table was setup level with the saw horses. This kept the pieces perfectly straight. The clamping was where the tricky came in. The force of the clamp pressure on the wax paper (less grip) made the two epoxy slick pieces slip out of alignment. Luckily I thought about this possibility near the last clamping and checked the others, sure enough several had slipped a little. So I clamped them to the table and each other. (The leftover glue was applied to the screw holes in the rudder case to be later sanded flush. And the other side of the Centerboard around the lead casting). Only one piece had an issue. Once I removed the paper the next day. It had set up with an offset (not a straight line) So I just cut the section out and redone the process from scratch. No big deal, the last is made over length by several feet anyhow. The amount of glue needed for this was quite small a 4 ounce batch was a waste. However I had a pile of one ounce cups from Duckworks. And gradients in "drams" what ever that is. Anyhow it had the right ratio So I mixed a micro batch of 5 Drams... A shot glass full.

The boom and gaff lumber was picked up and I cut the notches for birdsmouth in all the pieces. In total I cut over 120 linear feet of birdsmouth notch one afternoon for just these two items. And slowly at that. You can't rush a router, especially with how much meat had to be removed.
I filled the shop-vac twice.

Time: 5 hrs

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