Mast making at Shaw and Tenney

The second iconic work spot of the summer was 2-weeks of mast building at Shaw & Tenney. Shaw and Tenney has been in business since 1858 making gorgeous paddles and oars as well as masts, boat hooks, etc for boats. Sometimes they get interesting orders like for this project building four 8" diameter laminated, Douglas Fir masts for a high-end playground in NYC. They asked me to come up and help them take on this project and I was happy to do it.



The masts were all cut, rounded, and sanded by hand. They weight a few hundred pounds in the rough and were a challenge to put through the planer. Their dimensions had to be very accurate. Like any mast, once the piece is 4-sided and tapered, we can start 8-siding as we are doing above with a small skilsaw. After 8-siding this way, the mast was brought to 128-siding with nothing but patience and my favorite power planer. After two days plus of the power planer, when I that machine down for good, I can recall my hand vibrating for several hours.



The final rounding was done with custom shaped foam blocks, a trick from boat school that I use on a lot of projects. This was followed by finish sanding with the Festool. The result was some very nice masts! It was a wonderful place to work and watch the masters do their trade. One of the guys has been making oars and paddles for 25 years. To watch him work was quite impressive. I look forward to doing more business with S & T. Recently, they chose Clint Chase Boatbuilder as their official builder of their beautiful Whitehall.



After this project it was back to Portland for an overnight to see the family and pack for the next iconic week: Wooden Boat in Brooklin, Maine. I was to make my teaching debut at the Wooden Boat School.

Wooden Boat Show Family Boat building

We are catching up with a nons stop summer of boating events and where best to start the series of updates than with the Wooden Boat Show in Mystic, CT. In 2 1/2 days, a father son duo built one of our Echo Bay Dory Skiff kits. They discovered that there is a lot of boatbuilding, sweat, creativity and work to do even starting from a kit.

 

They launched on the third day at 3pm. They were very proud and perhaps glad they had a break to enjoy their success. My former life was a teacher and instructing people to build their own boats. Getting new folks into small boats, building their own boats from kits, and experiencing success in everyway is the number one priority for our customers. Likewise, we felt this year's Family Boatbuilding was a success and will plan to do these boats again next year.

 

Birdsmouth Sparmaking Demo

Clint will be giving a hands-on demonstration of Birdsmouth sparmaking at the Wooden Boat Show at 1pm on this coming Sunday. Please come by. The show starts Friday in Mystic, CT.

See more at http://www.clintchaseboatbuilder.com/Birdsmouth.html

A new rig for a Goat Island Skiff, Spruce for Roger Long's Yawl Dory and more Birdsmouth Masts and Spars

The finished mast and spars delivered and stepped into John Goodman's Goat Island Skiff Yawl #1 in Houston, TX. John does the Texas 200 in a few weeks!

To find good spruce you need to go right to the source. I enjoyed some wonderful walking with a customer who is having a Yawldory by Roger Long, N.A., built and wanted the Spruce for the spars, masts, and oars (my job) to come from her friend's land. We walked (i.e., bushwacked) and tagged a few nice Spruce trees.

 

Birdsmouth Masts under construction for a Michael Storer Goat Island Skiff. With Michael's blessing, Clint drew a yawl rig for the boat.

 

Varnishing the Sitka Spruce/Northern White Spruce Birdsmouth mast allows the grain of the Sitka to deepen and develop the contrasting lighter-colored Northern White Spruce. You get some of the benefits of Sitka for half the cost by mixing it with the local spruce we get hear in Maine and Canada.

The two masts are for the Goat Island Skiff, a birdsmouth on the left and a hollow-rectangular mast on the right. The mast on right is a customer's that I took in to check for chafing and leathered the chafed areas to prevent more.

CNC Boat Kit Cutting at Harbor Sales; First Three Francois Vivier Kits Sell

 
 
 

Last week, Clint took a trip to Maryland where Harbor Sales is located and cuts our CNC boat kits. The goal was to oversee the cutting of three Vivier kits that sold, Youkoulili, Ebihen 16, and Beg-meil. Harbor imports the plywood and cuts the panels on any of their four CNC machines (one of which has a 10x23 capacity and the one pictured is a 5x12). They package and ship by UPS Freight the kits direct to the customer. Clint sends the building instructions and getting started materials from Maine. Francois send the plans from France. We get epoxy starter kits to customers from Duckworks in TX or System Three Epoxy in WA.

One of the special features of Clint's kits is visible in the close-up shot of the machine cutting the planks. You may be able to make out the 'NC scarf' being machined onto the end of the plank. These scarfs are snapped together and glued by the builder and fits such that the pre-cut spile and sweep of the planks are maintained and perfectly aligned. Hours were spent making this critical feature work perfectly.

Cutting starts in a room full of computers. The files are opened, modified and sent to the machine outside of the room. The cutter exits to a console next to the machine, calls up the file and commands the machine to do its thing. The machine moves fast and there is an automatic shut-off sensor in case you step too close.

Also in kit building news, the Drake Rowboat, winner of the Wooden Boat Show Concourse De Elegance in 2009, is on the bench as a 1/4 scale CNC model. This step always comes before cutting an actual full size CNC model which is test built and checked again and again to adjust the files until they cut perfect molds, planks, laminating jigs and whatever the kit components are for that design.