Arrrrr me hearties. Welcome aboard.
Does the drilling ever end?! Oy Vey. With all the drilling I’ve done on this poor piece of wood, you’d think that I have become a master driller. Such is not the case. Very sad indeed. But I am learning things. If I ever have to do another boat refit, I’ll certainly be bringing some skills to the deck, so to speak.
As always fair winds, following seas, and God bless.
Arrrrr me hearties. Welcome aboard.
This is one of the project jobs that I was a bit nervous about. There can be NO screwing up with this one. If a mistake is made on this integral part, the whole piece is junk and it’s an expensive piece not to mention time consuming to shape, cut, drill, fill and so on.
The prescribed method for getting a round end on a square peg is to use a rasp, & file away till you have the needed round bit. However, I am not a wood worker by any stretch of the imagination so I did not want to take the chance that I might mess it up. Fortunately, I have a friend who is a fabricator / welder who agreed to make me a tool that would take the guess-work out of the job.
My first idea was to buy two off-the-shelf hole-saws and have my friend cut & weld them together to get the required depth: 3″. But after looking at the saws, and thinking a bit (good thing someone thinks) he realized that the outside diameter of the saws was 3″ but the inside diameter was smaller – less the width of the metal blade! Oops! Dodged a bullet there. So, the solution was to purchase a piece of 3″ I.D. pipe and make a saw blade on one end. That is exactly what he did. He went to the trouble of actually welding in carbide teeth! the tool worked fabulously! I am so grateful for friends who don’t mind pitching in a helping hand and gifting their time and skill for a job like this. Thanks, Ken!
Here’s how it went down:
As always fair winds, following seas, and God bless.
Arrrrr me hearties. Welcome aboard.
After an initial fail, I had to re-drill the holes to a larger size of hole. After filling with epoxy we go for attempt #3. Chalk up another fail. At this point I was getting quite perplexed at the inexplicable misalignment of the holes. A good night sleep and a bit of thought bought new ideas and methods. Have a look:
As always fair winds, following seas, and God bless.
Arrrrr me hearties. Welcome aboard.
Now is the time for all good bowsprits to be shaped and formed into useful configurations. With a fair bit of optimism and naivete, I started this phase of the project thinking that it would be straight-forward and simple enough with a good plan. Good plans are good but sometimes unforeseen circumstances can thwart the best of good plans.
At the end of the day the holes were drilled, filled and redrilled, but my, my, my, what a journey it was. Bit of a roller coaster ride. This is the beginning of what turned out to be a repetitive job making adjustments to correct the errors I encountered along the way.
I did manage to get it done. I have a couple more holes to drill but can’t do that till I test fit the bowsprit on the boat. That has to wait till I have new stainless nuts & bolts in hand and the paint is finished.
As always fair winds, following seas, and God bless.
Aarrrrrrr welcome aboard me hearties!
Time to grind off the excess glass on the bowsprit platforms. Didn’t take too long. Turned out ok.
Cleaned up the boomkin beam blocks, drilled them, and epoxied them to the boomkin beams. In the vid I express some concern about the height of the blocks being too much. A premonition dear reader, a premonition….
As always, fair winds, following seas, and God bless.
The time has come: The old Bow Sprit must go! This is a largish project that I’ve been looking forward to doing. The boat really can’t sail without having the sprit swapped out. In a previous blog / video I documented the purchase of a beautiful piece of Douglas Fir. It’s been sitting in my garage awaiting the day that it can start serving it’s purpose in life. But first, the old piece of wood must come off.
The old sprit is laminated boards with some kind of other wood fixed on the sides for aesthetic purposes. Both are quite rotten. The laminates have come apart and the rot is along about 2/3 of the stick. I’ll feel much happier with a good piece of wood up front.
The mast is already off the boat so I had a bit of a tough time getting the sprit off. I couldn’t use the mast to lift and I was doing this by myself. I tied the sprit off to a cleat but the center of balance is forward of the bow. I had to lever the sprit up and when the bolts finally cleared it disappeared overboard – down to the the pavement. It didn’t hit hard because I”d tied it off but my rope was probably too long. I’ll have to be very careful when I reinstall it.
I don’t recommend doing a boat refit solo – but I don’t have much choice. There are lots of people who want to go sailing – few who are willing to lend a hand with these big jobs. If you’re contemplating buying a project boat, consider who (if any) will be helping you with the grunt work. I highly recommend having a grunt. Grunts are good.
Nevertheless, here’s the vid of the process:
Fair winds, following seas, and God’s blessings
Biff.
Wake For Me 