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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.

mast+belt.jpg (7190 bytes) Here is a 60 grit 4" sanding belt turned inside out and slipped over the mast. 

rounder2.jpg (3403 bytes) 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.

rounderuse.jpg (10843 bytes) 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. 

mastsandPC.jpg (9334 bytes) 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. 

mastpatch.jpg (7619 bytes) 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...