Mast, boom, and yard - making some expensive shavings

A couple posts ago I talked about installing the gunwales and carlins on the hull, and discussed the problems I was having with the epoxied scarf joints giving way under the heat of the steam. To avoid the problem when installing the carlins, I wanted to get those parts in one piece.

My thoughts turned to the four beautiful Sitka Spruce boards I have had taking up space in the garage since April or so.  These were destined to be turned into mast, boom, and yard.  But I took another look at them and realized that with judicious layout and cutting I would have enough stock to get the carlins out, too.

Since the carlins were next to be installed, I decided it was time to cut up the spruce.  These boards are so long that I had to move my tools out to the garage so that I could send the outfeed end into the great outdoors.

My first step was to snap a chalk line, set up a fence and trim with a portable circular saw to get a straight edge to bear against the fence. 

Then I made some sawdust.  Here are the eight mast staves, two pieces of the yard, two pieces for the boom, and the stock for the two carlins.  I cut off the extra length from the long carlin to scarf onto the ends of two mast staves that came out of a board that was just a bit too short. 

I sent everything through the surface planer to reduce them to dimension,  and then scarfed the two short mast staves.

I then laminated the boom and yard.

Next up was to taper the mast staves.  I decided to do this by clamping them all together and planing them down.  I layed out guide lines on the two outer staves so I could tell when I was done.

I took off the bulk of the wood with a power planer, and then finished up with hand tools, which are more precise and controllable. 

After planing the taper, I applied two coats of epoxy to what will be the inner surfaces of the hollow mast.

I set up my birdsmouth cutter in the router table to cut the edges.  I test fit the parts, and it looks like it will make a mast.  Here's the diameter of the base. 

And here's the size of the top end.

The boom and yard have tapers on each end.  I was able to saw away some of the wood on the boom, but the remainder of the machining on that and all of the shaping on the yard was with hand planes, which made an impressive pile of shavings.

Next up with these parts will be to make the plugs for the ends of the mast and glue that up, round off the corners of the boom, and plane the mast and yard to final round dimensions.

Port gunwale and deck carlins in place

After the troubles I'd been having with scarf joints giving way under the head of steam bending, I was careful on the port gunwale to avoid steaming the two scarf joints present there.  I steamed the gunwale in sections, and that's easy to do using the plastic bag method of containing the steam.

The gunwale bent without any breakage, and again I used most of my clamps to glue that on to the hull.

For the carlins that support the deck, I was able to use single lengths of sitka spruce left over from my mast stock, so didn't have to worry about joints.  Here the whole length is being steamed.

And here clamped in place.  I clamp in place while it's still in the bag, and can even keep steaming while bending the part into place.

After the wood has cooled down, I unclamp and slip the bag off, then reclamp and allow the wood to dry. The next step for these is to glue them in and plane them to accept the deck. 

Rudder head begun and Mast material obtained

Again looking ahead I could see I'd want to put a rudder on this boat sometime, so I started looking into gluing together the head that holds the rudder.  This is made up of a sandwich of plywood pieces.  

The two outer pieces have areas that bear against the rudder allowing it to pivot up, and the tiller that gets inserted into the top.  These two areas get a layer of fiberglass cloth.  I traced the outline of the inner plywood pieces and applied some 6 oz fiberglass cloth.

I filled the weave with thickened epoxy left over from one of the other gluing jobs.

And then scraped/sanded that smooth.  I think I will finish this off with an epoxy/graphite mixture for abrasion resistance.

I also have been trying to figure out what stock to use for the mast, boom, and yard -- the important pieces that carry the sail.  I visited the local big box lumber yard a couple times trying to find something usable.  And I think I could have made that work with a lot of waste and a lot of scarf joints.  And a lot of time spent.

I finally decided to go first class and took a day off from work to make the 400+ mile trip to McCormick Lumber in Madison, WI, who stocks Sitka Spruce, catering to the local iceboat crowd as well as shipping across the country.

I got four boards - 6" and 9" wide, straight grain, no knots, 16 feet long.  Just beautiful!  Yes, and expensive.  But beautiful!

I'm going to have to move the saw, planer, router table, and dust collector out to the garage to process these, as my shop isn't big enough to handle them inside with the boat in there.  I'll need the full board length on both the infeed and outfeed sides of the machines.