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Greetings all,

I found this little beauty at my favorite hardwood specialty store - Owl Hardwoods, Des Plaines, IL.

12/4"s Genuine Mahogany, square, exactly 60 inches long, $48.  The grain is nearly perfectly vertical (horizontal in the photo) so the blank was cut from the outside edge of a center cut board.  Very nice.  There is a slight bit of run-out to the grain, but only 1/8" in 60", so I'm still happy.  This blank will make a nice bowsprit for my Weekender with very little waste.

Hope the year starts out as well for the rest of you.

Cheers,
Tom

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That will be one fine looking bowsprit. wishing all y'all HAPPY NEW YEAR

That's a fine jousting stick you found there Tom.

Greg

Greetings Greg,

Jousting stick?

No, it's a Pucker stick!  

Living in Chicago, we like to go north for summer vacations.  If you travel north of the FIB line in Wisconsin (about a 250 mile radius from Chicago) to get past the touristy spots and keep going north until Lake Superior gets in the way, you will find towns like Ashland and Bayfield on Chequamegon Bay surrounding the Apostle Islands.  Bayfield has a nice marina that handles the Ferry traffic over to Madeline Island, is home to quite a few sail boats, and hosts a small fleet of charter boats - the queen of which in my humble opinion was the Zeeto - 54 feet of three masted schooner displacing about 24 tonnes.



The Zeeto is a little large to single-hand, although I am convinced it could be done on light wind days in the protected waters of the Apostle Islands.  The Zeeto is an old fishing vessel converted for yacht use, and was rigged to be easy to handle short handed, so the wife and I had no trouble hoisting those gaffs. The rigging is old school - all block and tackle, not a winch on board. But Lake Superior is Blue Water, so the Zeeto always came with Capt'n Dave to help out.  If you have every seen the movie Captain Ron, then you have a good idea who Capt'n Dave is ... ... only Capt'n Dave had better stories! .  

After an afternoon of sailing, we would round up just outside the harbor entrance out of the way of the ferry traffic and douse the sails.  Capt'n Dave would then fire up the twin diesels and we would smartly round the corner past the ferries and glide into the harbor amongst the transient docks where all the big sail boats visiting from Duluth were tied up.  The open water in the transient harbor was only about 150 ft across, less with boats tied up along the quays.



Gliding into the harbor, Capt'n Dave pointed the Zeeto's bowsprit at whatever large expensive boat had crew on deck, and with a gleam in his eye he says to me, "Watch this. This ought to pucker their sphincters!" Then he idled the starboard prop and put the port engine full astern to noisily churn the water and the Zeeto pivoted around smartly and that long bowsprit sweept across the transients from stem to stern.  Then the Zeeto backed down into her berth with no fuss at all.  The look on their faces when they saw 24 tonnes of 54 ft schooner with a bowsprit headed right at them with no maneuvering room was worth the price of the charter.  But the Zeeto had twin screws connected to twin diesels and could pivot in her own length. Great fun, though.

Here she is docked ...



When I told Capt'n Dave that I was thinking about building a sailboat, he said "Make sure you choose one with a pucker stick!"

Cheers,
Tom

PS.  The Zeeto has subsequently been sold out of the charter business and is once again a privately sailed vessel.  Last I saw her, she still looked ship-shape, Bristol fashion.

Well a piece like that deserves some shape. Traditionally it would be octagonal from the bitt to the near the end of the clipper knee, then round from there on out. Often you'd find they made an ellipse and shaved the top of it flat so you could stand on it. Of course at least three coats of epoxy and several coats of clear whatever is you desire.

Honduran or African mahogany, Tom?  A great price for either, but especially Honduran!  I'm heading to Kettle Moraine Hardwoods tomorrow to find my mahogany sprit (had been planning douglas fir).  What are you using for mast and boom?

Dave

Greetings Paul,

Yes, I have been researching good looking bowsprits ...



and I liked these ...







I like the idea of going from square right at the bitts, to octagonal outboard of the deck over the knee, to a round cross section outboard of the knee, and then necked down to a smaller diameter for the last eight inches.  During my searching, I did discover why you are supposed to paint the last little sections of all of your spars white: So that you see them better and not whack yourself in the head!

By the way, that last boat is a real Friendship sloop, the Narwal, built in 1972 by Newman / Morris, and is currently berthed here in Chicago.

Paul, in your spare time, could you please reverse engineer a shallow draft trailerable version of the above boat that is light enough to tow behind my Crown Victoria and short enough to fit in a standard two car garage (22ft x 22ft) with a tabernacle fold down mast for five minute set-up times? 

Cheers,
Tom

Greetings Dave,

Genuine Mahogany is Honduran Mahogany (Swietenia Macrophylla). From what I can tell, the Honduran is finer and straighter grained wood and runs from tan to brown in color. The African varieties (Khaya) are much redder in color with wilder grain patterns - to the point that you have to be very careful about picking out boards - but the price is usually 30% to 40% less then the Honduran.  I have used both on the boat but prefer the Genuine for structural members.  The Genuine cuts like butter with the scroll saw blade not wanting to follow the grain at all.  But watch out for silica in both.  While picking through the pile last, I found a board speckled with so much silica that the wood actually glittered.  Such a board will dull your tools very quickly.  Stay away from any boards that have "furry" strips in them.  Those are stressed fibers in the wood and the board will go boing and twist when cut.

The mast and gaff will be bird's-mouth construction of Sitka Spruce for lightness to cut down weight aloft and help improve what little stability these boats have.  I have just been waiting for the right piece to come along.  Owl has a 16 ft straight grain Sitka stick in stock right now that would do, but it is four times the board feet that I need and would need re-sawing to boot.  I still might buy it this month.  Then I would have four chances to get it right!

For the boom, I might cheat and just buy a pre-finished two inch round and try to stain it all to match.  The boom wood doesn't matter for strength, and if it turns out to be heavy, the weight just helps hold the foot of the sail down.

This whole business of choosing wood is interesting. I have seen some 10 and 12 quarters thick mahogany boards that were flat sawn.  But they are thick enough to slice off all of the thin trim pieces needed for the openings around the cabin and hatches.  Sliced this way, the pieces suddenly become vertically grained or the equivalent of quarter sawn.

Cheers,
Tom

Tom there are about 40 different types of "mahogany" and the American mahoganies are considered the best. It's a special wood that loses a lot of appeal when stained. Mahogany is one of the few woods that will dramatically alter it's color when the light hits it differently. It's the silica content in the wood as Tom has noted and a really pretty thing when just clear finished.

These are a mahogany thwart (before and after installation), with the first few coats of finish on, both under artificial light, which don't do them justice. Under natural light, they have a metal flake quality about them, that shocked the client when he saw them, the first time in the sun light. The color goes from a light golden yellow to a deep reddish brown and the grain seems to "flip flop" when you move past it. Stain ruins this aspect of mahogany. Something to consider.

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(01-03-2010, 07:28 PM)tombayus link Wrote: [ -> ]Greetings Paul,

Yes, I have been researching good looking bowsprits ...

I thought the figurehead went under the bowsprit.    ???