images courtesy of Leif Wikberg
In the Autumn of 2018 we planned out the joints in the staves of the sitka spruce mast and the douglas fir boom. Both of these spars required 8 staves with one or two joints per stave. We used long 1:12 scarph joints to maintain the strength of the timber.
spar planning
By February we had glued up the staves and started setting up the spindle moulder to cut the tapered bevels onto the staves. A spreadsheet was useful to verify the geometry and the size of the facets.
scarph joints
The timber supplied by John Lammerts at Touchwood BV was extraordinarily good. Having hollowed out, we glued the spars up using melamine urea formaldehyde from Azko Nobel. We planed the 16 and 32 facets and finally shaped our handheld sanding devices and prepared the wood for varnish.
Ester’s skipper Laurance and rigger Jean-Michel then arrived to prepare the spars for rigging and assembly. Their experience in using rigs of this type is invaluable!