De Pan

Today I managed to clean down the scarf joints armed with my Farriers File - Thanks Andrew for the hint!  The scarf joints turned out well and the staves dead straight, thanks to the aluminium ladder which I rigged up hastily as a bench.

The duck tape worked fine to hold the scarf joint together while the epoxy set over night.  Additionally I lightly clamped all the staves together separated by polythene sheets against the side of the ladder which further ensured that everything was held straight in both vertical and horizontal planes.

Then assisted by Brian, we ran the staves through the planer to clean up the saw marks and reduce the staves to their final thickness, 13.6mm.   Once again the ladder made for a very serviceable outfeed table.

Once we had the staves dimensioned we cut the lengths to the approximate size of 23' which allowed us remove several feet from the least attractive ends of the staves and also resulted in the scarf joints being positioned more randomly along the mast.

Next came the process of cutting the birdsmouth V notches in the sides of the staves.  We set up the table saw using two featherboards which resulted in a consistent clan notch cut from the staves, except for the last few inches where the stave ran past the feather board.  This shouldn't cause any issue as we have cut the staves extra long by some 7 inches.

The featherboards kept manners on the staves as they were passed through the table saw, however on the second pass of each stave the saw produced needle shard cutoffs one of which was expelled into my finger with some force, resulting in a badly swollen finger...So my advice would be to be watchful for this and wear gloves, which I subsequently did and benefited from their protection as further needles were projected from the saw.

So next on the agenda is to cut the taper into the staves on the side opposite to the V notch.  I have not yet decided whether to make up a jig for te table saw or simply place all the staves side by side and use an electric and hand plane to cut out the tapers.

I read where someone created their birdsmouth mast in 5 or so hours...well this is Day 3 and still not finished, but steady progress nonetheless.

Rather than fiddling around with taper jigs for the tablesaw, I took advantage of the clement weather and fired up my Quansheng Foreplane and tapered the staves by hand.  In fact it was quite a fast operation and I felt a lot safer in the process, still smarting from yesterday's episode on the table saw....

Once again Brian came along to lend a hand...very welcome when managing 23ft staves..

The staves have all being tapered according to the dimensions which I worked out  (see earlier posts) and I made up two plugs in birdsmouth design for the bottom of the mast and where the shrouds and forestay are fastened to the mast.  I feathered the ends of the plugs to ensure no hard spots exist.  I'm hopeful that the extra effort will result in a sturdy light mast.

Tonight I glued up the birdsmouth plugs which was quite straightforward, although I was surprised at how much epoxy was used in the process.  Tomorrow, I plan to clean off the plugs and plane them down to size to fit the inside of the mast.  Hopefully by tomorrow evening I will have mast finally glued up, and then Day 5 will plane down and bring the mast diameter to its final dimensions.....so much for 5 hours!