Spars & Oars
We have both worked on and built a number of spars and oars. Dani has built a new 14’ solid Sitka Spruce mast for a sailing dinghy, built a hollow ‘birdsmouth’ spar for a RNSA sailing dinghy, worked on a solid 80’ Douglas Fir mast that needed significant rot removal, and has made a handful of spooned oars. Sam has worked on many of the Salcombe Yawl masts from the fleet, repaired numerous gig oars and together we have worked on the wooden mizzen mast from our own boat.
Top view of hollow birdsmouth mast
recessed notches for thumb cleats on hollow spar
adding a tapered block to a hollow mast
Making wooden oars
Making wooden oars
Shaping an oar
Oar after oiling
Curved blades to the oars
Sapele highlights through the blades
Rot finding and removal on 80' mast from a Sail Training Vessel
Gluing up a 14' piece of Sitka Spruce to make a sailing dinghy mast
The glued mast, marking up to take it from square to octagonal.
Knocking the corners off
Halfway from square to octoganal
Fully octagonal
Marking up to make the mast 16-sided
Marking up to make the mast 16-sided
16 sided
Smoothing by eye to round the mast
Marking up a square tenon
Rough cut square tenon
Cutting a round tenon on the other end of the mast
Knocking off corners to octagonal for the tenon
octagonal tenon, then marked up for 16 siding
16-sided tenon, then rounded by eye
We found rot in the top section of our mizzen
We cut the top, and marked the scarf length
We planed the mast down to a point
This is a 12:1 ratio, for scarf joints on spars
New top mast sections laminated together
Mapping out the matching scarf joint
Planing them to match our mast
Here they areglued together
New top mast glued to our old mast
After shaping the first lamination we added extra cheeks to match the repair to the original thickness. This was a necessary step because we wanted to use reclaimed timber and the mast we had wasn't the same size as ours.
And then we shaped the extra cheeks in too