More planing and scarfing

The past two weeks I have been working on the oars and I started on the masts.  Last week I cut new oar blade pieces and glued together new oar blades.  I used filleting compound (epoxy and wood flour) to glue and reinforce the joints, and put the pieces over a heat register to make sure the epoxy cured properly (first photo).  Once that was done, I did a lot of planing to taper the oar blades to the right profile and rounded their corners (second photo).  The oars were a little heavy, so I decided to round the shafts all the way from where they meet the oarlocks (where the so-called button will go) to the blade.  I did it with drawknife and plane, using only my eyes and sense of touch for guides, and created an unbelievable amount of wood shavings (my wife said, "too bad we don't have a hamster").   By now the rough carving of the oars is done and they will need much sanding before they are epoxied and varnished.  Hours of physical labor went into it but there is something very satisfying about this type of woodwork.


Today I started on cutting the boards for the masts and creating the scarf joints.  I thought I would try to cut the joints rather than spend hours sanding the joints away.  First I clamped together six boards, staggered by 4 inches each, and clamped on a piece of leftover poplar 1X2 as a cutting guide for the circular saw (third photo).  It worked, sort of: keeping the blade absolutely vertical is not easy.  So now I have to finish the job by sanding the scarfs flat (last photo), but at least 80% of the material is already removed.

Then I cut two of the remaining boards in two, using the same kind of diagonal scarf cut.  I got two pieces of approximately 48 inches and two of just over 43.  I got three pieces of 24 inches out of the ninth board, and a 19 inch piece from a bit left over from the my original, abortive oar blade work.  Once again the scarf joints were not cut 100% right and they need sanding to the final shape.  After that, the boards will be arranged in the following way:

Main mast: top layer eight feet plus four feet; middle layer two feet plus eight feet plus two feet; bottom layer four feet plus eight feet.  This will create a mast of about 12 feet, with scarf joints at different places to avoid weak points.

Mizzen mast:  top layer eight feet plus 43 inches; middle layer two feet plus eight feet plus 19 inches; bottom layer 43 inches plus eight feet.  This will create a mast of about 139 inches.

There will be more sawdust flying, clamps tightening and epoxy curing, so keep checking 179inches.

boatbuilder