Mast and spars - final sanding and shaping

With the mast fairly round after my work with the hand plane, I continued with the final sanding.  I used a power sander to knock down the worst of the ridges, but my hand could still feel edges, so I then worked it over a couple times with a long strip of sandpaper, which could wrap around and did a good job of taking off the high spots.  It's pretty round now, and I've judged it good enough. Here's a shot of the base:

This is what a scarf joint looks like in one of the staves.

I then took my shinto rasp to the top end for a rough shaping.

And then finished up with 80-grit sandpaper over a foam sanding block.  80-grit is the finest I've used anywhere on the boat.

I then spent some time figuring out where the sail would lay on the spars, so I could determine where to drill the holes to hold the ends of the sail to the boom and the yard.  This took a while on the boom, as I also was figuring out where the eye straps and cheek blocks would go that handle the reefing lines.  I built my boom 6" longer than the plans, and ended up cutting two inches off.

I then rounded off the ends of the boom and yard, and drilled holes to lash the ends of the sail in place.  I coated the inside of the holes with epoxy.



I also rounded off the edges on the base of the mast,

And applied a layer of fiberglass to the plug for wear resistance, as this will be inserted into the mast step with each voyage.

At the same time I filled in some small voids in a couple places on the mast.  These were caused when I had a bit of a glitch routing out the V-grooves. The stave rode up and the router bit cut a little closer to the edge in a couple spots.  I didn't have quite enough epoxy spread in the joint to fill this on initial glue up.

So I brushed in a little unthickened epoxy, which flowed in to fill them completely.

When the epoxy cures I will sand things smooth, run a fillet around the plug in the bottom of the mast, and then coat the mast and spars with epoxy.  As of now I plan to paint the boom and the yard and varnish the mast to show off the wood.

Here's a sneak peak of the start to an upcoming project - I found this one really nice 16' long cedar 2x6 in the rack at Menards.  Nice tight grain and very few knots.  I'm planning to use this to build my yuloh - a Chinese sculling oar that I will use to move the boat when the wind dies.  I'll have more information on that to come.

Laminating a tiller

One of the things I've been working on between other jobs is creating a tiller.  Rather than reinvent the wheel, I decided to use an existing pattern created by Dale Simonson.  You can see the details of the layout here: Dale Simonson's tiller pattern

I drew out the pattern on a piece of scrap plywood, and glued down blocks that I could clamp to. Then it was just a matter of cutting the strips and planing them down to about 5/16" thickness. The thickest part of this lamination took just over 6 strips, and not all of the strips needed to be full length, since the profile of the tiller is not constant.  I used walnut and a contrasting strip of maple the second one down from the top.

Before gluing I put packing tape down on the form so the glue wouldn't stick. Glueup was then straightforward, using regular wood glue.  The curves are gentle and easy to achieve.

After the glue dried, I cleaned up  the squeeze out and then planed it down to a thickness that matches the opening in the rudder head.

I then glued up a smaller blank for the hiking stick.  I put packing tape on the tiller and laminated the hiking stick right on top, so that the curves match.

Then it was a matter of removing any wood that didn't look like a tiller.  The profile changes from square at the end that inserts into the rudder head, to roughly round at the hand end.

I used my Shinto rasp, a spokeshave, and sandpaper to shape this part.  I think it feels best when there is a little increase in diameter towards the end, like a pitchfork handle.  In this photo from above you can see that curve a bit.

I also like a bit of a knob at the end so your hand can tell where the end is.  Axe handles are like this.  I ended up glueing on another thickness of wood at the end so I had enough to shape.

I also found I didn't like the feel of the handle when it was completely rounded, so I put a little flat on the bottom side.  This also helps your hand know where it is on the tiller shaft.

I also rounded off the hiking stick and reduced the diameter on the end to fit into the Ronstan universal joint that holds these two parts together.  Here's how that looks.

To finish this off I need to drill out the hole at the rudder end and epoxy in a bushing, then epoxy coat overall and varnish.