Wa'apa Build - Part 36 (spars & mast continued)

Ok..so a whole new year now and a long long time since an update here. Work has continued slowly when possible, but been lazy to update the blog...so here comes several posts to catch up...

Left off with mast staves being scarfed so...

With mast staves scarfed..taper was marked on the narrow ones

And planed down

Large plug for bottom of mast was constructed

And glued to narrow staves then cleaned up

Spacer blocks were fit and glued in

Using center line along wide stave to help align and keep things straight.

Then the wide staves glue on to close it up

All glued up in the rough...

Many shavings later mast cleaned up and looking better

Edges rounded over and bottom section of mast gets a wrap of fiberglass reinforcment. Spars and mast tip also receive wrap of glass on ends to prevent splitting.

Holes drilled into spar ends for attaching the sail, and pad eye fitted to top of mast for the halyard

Then several coats of epoxy to seal up and fill weaves and mast and spars are complete...awaiting sanding and several coats of spar urethane.

Wa'apa Build - Part 35 (building spars & mast)

Work on spars and mast begins...

Blanks for yard and boom, to be scarfed to length..

Scarf taper marked, doing a 12:1 scarf on these..

 Start making cuts down close to the line.

 Chisel and hammer clear most of the waste very quickly.

Then finished up nice with block and jack plane.

 Came out very good...phew...

 Faces primed with a couple coats of unthickened epoxy in prep for gluing up.

Then buttered up with thickened epoxy and clamped together.

I've added another strip of wood to bottom of boom to increase its height and stiffness a bit.

 Another scarf...

And laminated onto the boom...

With everything scarfed up and laminated I proceeded to tapering the yard and boom...

Marking tapers with batten...

 

 Tapers all planed and cleaning up...lots and lots of shavings...

 Boom and yard all tapered, edges rounded, and cleaned up...ready for final finishings..

 Plans call for yard to be completed rounded, but I'm worried about it being too flexible since I'm using cheap pine rather than douglas fir or spruce like plans recommend. For now I just gave the edges a 1/4 inch round over. Can easily round it more later if it proves to be too stiff...

Glue lines look good...

With yard and boom mostly completely, got started on the mast. Mast will be a simple hollow box section.

Some assembly required...

 8:1 scarfs on the wide mast staves

 Drill small holes and insert piece of stiff wire to keep pieces from moving around.

Then prepped and glued up...

To be continued...