I had expected to be at this point back in February but issues with varnish have delayed me. As it turns out, the varnish issues led to my being able to go back and apply a stain to all the spars, which I am very glad to have done. Each spar was treated as follows: […]
As mentioned in a previous post, my first coat of varnish on this build failed to ever cure. As it happens this was fortuitous since I wasn’t really fond of the natural color of the spars. Since I needed to eliminate the epoxy substrate as the cause of the tacky varnish, I was going to […]
This weekend I rigged up all my spars in a ’rotisserie’ style setup so that I can apply a single coat to all sides of a spar at once. This should really speed up the finishing of these pieces. With these long angle irons that I’ve been using, it was easy to clamp up some […]
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Glued up the mast on Saturday. I had two helpers and it took us about three hours, though we were not in a rush at all. Here are some pictures of everything clamped up. Below, I’ll talk about the process. Before glue, we clamped everything up dry and studied it for a while. I was […]
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I have cut the tapers in all four mast staves. Now to cut the rabbets in the two side pieces. The manual suggests for each rabbet making two cuts with a table saw. My side pieces have a noticeable bow in the last several feet, so I worried about being able to keep a long, […]
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Completing all my spars is another thing I am doing prior to stitching up the hull. Only reason is to not have to work in a cramped area once the hull comes together. Once all the spars are varnished, I’ll hang them from the ceiling where they are out of the way. For reference…I’m working […]
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I ordered the timber kit but I still have to cut some of my own scarf joints. I’ve not done this before. I tried three different ways and the third is what I will use from here on. The scarfs I’ve done so far are for the four mast staves. Block Plane This is the […]
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