Sanding the main mast for a Swallow boats BayRaider built by Denman Marine in Tasmania Australia. Mast is birdsmouth construction made from douglas fir with West System epoxy. The lathe is a small Ledacraft machine. We take the spar to just past 16 sided and 80 grit paper takes care of the rest. Spars are sanded to 240 grit then they are hand sanded along the spar's length with 180 grit paper. Ends are turned on the lathe. Total time to sand perfectly round to 240 grit is about 20 minutes
Weight of the finished spar is 8kg which isn't too bad for a 5 metre mast.
Great technique!
fuckfannyfiddlefart 1 year ago
Andrew this was great to see. I've been procrastinating on setting up the very thing and am motivated as I have two 16' masts coming up. These are nice lathes, we should have something like it here. We should compare birdsmouth mast making notes sometime and maybe we can pick up some tricks from each other.
Clint
Clint Chase BoatBuilder
Portland Maine
ClintChaseBBuilder 2 years ago