During November I didn’t get as much done on the boat as I would have liked. Work keeps on getting in the way, and as I rather like the idea of a bank account that is going up rather than down, I find it hard to say no to my clients...
I did manage to start work on the wishbone booms, and ordered my sails, so there has been some progress.
For this boat I’ve decided to use wishbone booms rather than sprit booms. The windsurfer style booms will allow the sails to set nicely on either tack, and, like a birdsmouth mast, it’s something that I’ve been wanting to try out for a while. After a seach online, I settled on using Justin Adams’ design (found at https://grabcad.com/library/wishbone-boom-design-for-classic-day-sailing-boat-1) for the shape of the booms, adjusted for the size of my sails.
The booms are made of five thin layers of Oregon, which I cut from the strips left over from the staves used to make the masts. I’ve made the booms longer than necessary, so that I can fine tune the lengths once my sails arrive, in early January. Until I can confirm the final dimensions on the masts, I’m not going to finish the boom ends or trim the boom lengths.
After cutting the strips I covered a sheet of chipboard with plastic, and marked the profile of each boom onto the plastic, using 9 stations for each profile. Screws sleeved with PVC tubing were fixed to the chipboard at each of these station marks, forming the shapes for each boom.
Each bundle of strips was placed in the jig, with more PVC-sleeved screws added to hold them against the station screws.
Taking everything back out of the jig, I coated the first set of strips in epoxy, joined them with thickened epoxy, and put them back into the jig.
Once the additional screws were inserted, to hold it in the right shape, I then added clamps to ensure that there was a good squeeze-out of glue all along the boom. For the two inner booms on the jig, I used the lap clamps I had made, as there wasn’t room to use conventional clamps on them, and I wanted to glue all four pieces at the same time.
Once I had everything glued, I went over the surfaces I had access to, and removed any excess epoxy, to make sanding the booms easier later.
After waiting several days, I removed the booms from the jig, and sanded them to remove any excess epoxy. The mizzen boom pieces fit nicely inside the main boom pieces, and hopefully this will still be the case once I have he boom ends in place. Ths would make storing the booms a little bit easier.
The next item on the agenda is painting the hull. I spent last weekend mastering a new spray gun, and as soon as my free time and reasonable temperatures coincide I will tackle this task. I’m using Boatcraft Pacific’s Aquacote for this boat, as I was very happy with it on my CS17.
Once the painting is out of the way I can turn the boat back over and start on the seating and the internal fitout.
The masts are still to be coated, and I don’t have a trailer yet, but I’m getting closer, and with a bit of luck might be ready for the Wooden Boat Association's Rye sailing day in February.
