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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Last weekend I finally got back to working on the boat. All my spars are now sanded down to 220 and almost ready for epoxy and varnish. I still need to trim the ends of the mast and bowsprit. At that point I will try to set up a rotisserie rig for application of epoxy […]
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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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I am also going to build my spars before stitching the hull. I ran across two 20′ long pieces of 4″ angle iron and figured they would make good reference surfaces for spar work. Despite dropping one on my foot I finally got them mounted up on some sawhorses and I think they will be […]
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