Remember back in March when I was telling you about how we glued up a new bowsprit? I mentioned the sprit again in June when we received all our bronze rigging hardware. Unfortunately, I never really wrote about how it went from a 9 foot long 6X6 hunk of timber to an expertly crafted and beautifully shaped “hood ornament” for our boat. So here goes:
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ll try and keep it short and sweet with a lot of visual stimuli to keep from boring the shit out of you. Basically, after laminating the Doug Fir timbers I straightened and squared up my blank using some hand planes and a Skil-Saw. Then at the tip, I cut away the shoulder for the kranze iron and rounded that down with a disk sander. The bottom and both sides got tapered from the tip to about the half way point. The bottom corners received a chamfer to match the old sprit, but I left the top corners intact for a little extra strength.
The old sprit has 3 cross braces mortised into the top to support the pulpit. So does the new sprit.
The whole shebang got two coats of clear epoxy to seal it up nice and tight, then two coats of Interlux Epoxy Primekote. We had a stainless bracket made for the windlass that sits on top of the sprit and is cross-bolted through stainless ferrules epoxied into the wood. The windlass bracket also incorporates the staysail tab just ahead of the Sampson posts. The old staysail tab was bolted through the top of the sprit and a serious source of moisture infiltration that eventually led to the rot problem. After that, 4 coats of Interlux Perfection 2-part polyurethane.
So now you’re all caught up on how the new bowsprit came to be. Check back soon and I’ll tell you how we got it installed on the boat.
