Mast rebuild

The remains of our mast laid out for measurements.

First, I have to remove all of the hardware. Then chop the old wood back and cut a 10 to 1 scarf joint. A scarf is a method of gluing two boards together that provides a larger gluing surface. Since the mast will be under a large strain, it is a good idea to have very large glue joints. The problem is that a large glue joint means that the level of perfection goes up considerably. Since I’m doing most of the work with hand tools (and hand held power tools) a lot can go wrong. To give you some idea of the size of the joint, the wood will be 1 ¾ inches thick but the joint will be 17 ½ inches long!



I have to cut kerfs (slices) into the wood that I want to remove and then take a chisel and cut the sections out. Then it’s a careful job to slowly hand plane the wood down to the desired angle. These two joints have to be done by hand. Afterwards, I could use a jig and the electrict planer to make the scarf joints instead of by hand.

Finally, it was time to glue the first board into place. I cut a cross hatching into the scarf face to give the glue a better "grip" on the wood and then clamped it together.


Deatons let me use their clamps for the glue job.