Summer Breeze building
notes -
Day Ten (Oct 23, 2000)
Couldn't put in too much time in
the shop today, but I made a gizmo I call the "rounder." I saw Gregg
Rossle use this at the Wooden Boatbuilding School in Brooklin Maine last summer.
It's one of those gizmo's that once you see it seems obvious. Great for changing
that faceted stick into a rounded spar. You can cut a sanding belt into a long
strip and attach wooden handles to the ends and go after it "shoe
shine" style, but this gizmo is many times faster.
Here is a 60 grit 4" sanding
belt turned inside out and slipped over the mast.
Here's the gizmo. It's a wooden drum
about 3" in diameter and 6" long mounted on a 5/16" threaded rod,
with a handle that "idles" meaning the rod can spin freely inside it.
My handle is plastice pipe, Gregg uses copper. I made my drum by cutting out a
stack of disks with a hole saw. They're sandwiched onto the rod between washers
and double nuts (to lock them tight) it's covered with tape to give it a crown
shape, then rubber. Gregg uses inner tube rubber, I had some industrial rubber
backed carpet around that I stapled on rubber side out, and it seems to work.
Here it is at work. If I wasn't
snapping the picture you would see my left hand on the handle. It takes a little
practice, but works great.
After doing a coarse and medium belt
I switched to 100 grit on my orbital Porter Cable sander. It's amazingly easy to
sand a cylinder with a circular motion. I found my pair of "shop mate"
saw horses with the crank clamping set up were a big help. For the
"rounder" I clamped the mast firmly, but for the orbital it held fine
just resting in the gaps of the saw horses.
A few small knot holes fell out while
rounding so I filled them with a little epoxy mixed with wood dust from my belt
sander bag. (See, I don't use PL Premium for everything.)
That's it for now.
Day Eleven...
