Rounding spars
Mostly evenings after work - with the weather permitting - I continued working on spars for Louve. This work is so satisfying that I can see myself making new spars - if needed - with joy.
After cleaning the glue and squaring all sides I marked stations and drawn taper lines.
It would save me a lot of work (and noise for my neighbors) would I have a band saw, but I don’t so I planed down excess wood with power plane.
Once tapered on all faces I gauge-marked all faces for turning square into octagon. That went smooth, also with power plane. From 8 to 16 faces was even faster. From there I switched to hand plane and started rounding the mast.
Eyeballing the progress until I decided that it was time to start sanding round the spar.
I made a power-tool as described in Bud McIntosh book but that did not work as intended. Probably diameter of the drum is too small and the paper does not grip the rubber enough to spin on the mast.
Well, nobody said it’s gonna be easy, right?
I didn’t feel like making a new revision of this, after all I have only two spars to make.
Instead I prepared shaped foam pads, glued 80-grid sandpaper and kicked it with some elbow grease.
Very good resource to learn these steps in spar making is Off Center Harbor series with Geoff Kerr on Caledonia Yawl building. Only this series is worth more than yearly subscription!
Dodging mosquitos and sweating properly I finished sanding the mast. It is as round as I want it to be.
It became surprisingly light-weight, after all this tapering and rounding. I weighted it to be 14,5kg so after varnishing and putting all hardware it will probably weight no more than 16kg.
No reason, really, to make it hollow, in my opinion.
Next will come yard, already planed to 32 faces.