Saturday, April 10, 2010

What $396 worth of wood looks like... Mast project day 1

So, yesterday was spent mainly waiting for the lumber to be delivered and sorting out the work area...

The total cost of wood for the project comes to just under $400 and, surprisingly half of that won't be in the mast at all but will be the spar bench and molds for the mast. Which is something to keep in mind for would be builders that a lot of the expense and time building a boat is not in the boat at all but goes for stuff that enables you to build the boat.

I was very impressed with the sheet of 3/4" form ply I bought for building the section molds as it was of a higher quality then a couple of sheets of "marine" ply bought the other day for another project at seriously silly prices. This sort of ply makes a lot of sense for some types of boat building and for a sharpie hull or say a Buehler schooner where planking could be in 3/4" would work out very well at a fraction of what marine ply is going for these days... Something to keep in mind!

Now, of course, comes the bad part (and folks, there is ALWAYS a bad part) of the job making two 20-foot planks, eight saw horses into something sturdy and level to bolt a bunch of female station molds to... The problem is that the yard I'm building in is anything but level and the job for want of a better word is fiddly... I hate fiddly!

Half of today will be fiddly level spar-bench making while the other half will be ripping all the lumber into 1/2" X 3/4" strips which is not fiddly but simply boring (good thing I have an iPod!)

Tomorrow is back to fiddly and boring as scarfing is the order of the day...