{"id":5518,"date":"2026-06-08T06:02:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T16:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.svyohelah.com\/wordpress\/?p=5518"},"modified":"2026-06-08T06:02:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T16:02:07","slug":"bowsprit-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.svyohelah.com\/wordpress\/archives\/5518","title":{"rendered":"Bowsprit, Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The bowsprit has been sitting quietly while we accomplished a few other tasks, like making new handrails, cutting starboard (plastic) bases for the 4 dorades, ordering the new windlass, and getting the mast into a place we could strip and paint it. I also needed access to our foredeck to measure the angle of the bowsprit to the samson post so I could cut the tenon in the inboard end of the bowsprit, had to wait for gelcoat and non-skid to finally be finished in week 30 of this marathon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I removed the bolts in the wide end of the bowsprit to cut off the excess and establish the inboard end. Measurements from the boat gave me the angle of the Samson post end of 83.3 degrees from vertical. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I cut the end at 83.3 degrees with a tenon matching the old bowsprit using a pull saw, chisels, and planes. When I make the new Samson post it will have a matching mortise. With the inboard end mostly finished, I can now establish exact locations for all the other features and shapes on the bowsprit. I will do this starting at the back, working forward. The only critical dimension is the distance from the tenon end to the cranse iron because any change would change the rig geometry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I sent the windlass bracket to a welder to modify it to fit the new windlass. Since Muir had changed to a composite housing they added additional mounting holes in the front ears. Jeremy at Monkey Wrench did an excellent job. I also decided to route the windlass power cables outside the bowsprit. The hole through the bowsprit has always been a problem to seal and I really don’t want a big hole through the new bowsprit. In the above picture there are spacers in place to mockup the new windlass location<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I marked the hexagon shape beginning and curves. I marked the face edges and cut away the area between the lines by using a saw and removing the waste with chisels. Finished with planes and sanding. The transitions were carved out using a concave spokeshave. Per the original bowsprit, the transitions from square to hexagon are different for top and bottom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This project has completely changed my opinion of hand work. The power planner has little feel, it is even hard to tell when grain direction has changed. For this bowsprit I have used a Stanley No 5 Bench plane, a low angle block plane, a chisel plane, a bullnose plane, two spokeshaves (flat and curved), wood chisels, and rasps. Sharpening these tools several times a day has become the norm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The raised windlass mount allows the power cables to route alongside the bowsprit instead of through it. Our new Cheetah windlass has electrical studs hanging below the bottom of the case, corresponding to the cutout in the wood mount and the same in the modified windlass bracket. The added mount is epoxied to the top of the bowsprit and the metal mount has three 3\/8 fasteners on each side of the sprit. I will epoxy threaded G10 into the sides of the bowsprit for these bolts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Shaping is complete up to the cranse iron, it is now time to turn this big squarish blob into a cylinder the cranse iron can slide onto. Note in the above picture the two outside boards are wider than the rest. These are the second and ninth boards in the original glue up, we lost the outside boards at the end of the octagon. This was done to avoid thinning the out side boards too much when turning this into a cylinder and rounding the end. My old bowsprit had a thin cheek that looked pretty fragile as it delaminated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I flattened the end and drew a circle to represent the shape needed. I then drew lines across the corners outside of the circle to give me the areas to remove. I extended these lines the length of the sprit section with a square. After I removed 4 corners, I drew sixteen new lines to represent the next 8 corners to remove. I used the spokeshave to remove material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I just kept cutting off edges, checking with straight edges, squares, and my circle template, removing everything that wasn’t a circle. Near the hexagon end I had to use chisels, the bullnose plane, and a rasp since the spokeshave simply wouldn’t get close enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It was a long process to get the cylinder perfect enough to slide the cranse iron into place. Fractions of an inch at a time. But it finally fit. After a lot of cleanup and squaring of the shoulder the cranse iron looked great except when looking down the length of the bowsprit – the top tang definitely tailed off to the left. It also didn’t correspond to the seam that runs down the center of the sprit (a great reason to use an even number of boards in the lamination.) I spent more time squaring everything, checking dimension against both the cranse iron and my plywood template. When the template was perfect, I decided it was time to look at the new cranse iron a little closer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our boat came with a spare bowsprit. We received it from the second owner and I noted several wood repairs in it, not what I expect from a new bowsprit. When we went cruising we removed the cranse iron and gave the bowsprit to the Center for Wooden Boats. Starting this bowsprit project, I figured I would use the spare cranse iron. The above picture is the spare cranse iron sitting on a reference flat surface with a square on that same flat surface. Someone welded the ear on crooked! Off to the old bowsprit to remove the cranse iron. BTW, the only way I know to remove the cranse iron is with a torch to release the adhesive caulk used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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New round section with the shoulder cleaned up, everything square. Ready for final sanding!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Last shaping job was to round the end. Since it is a 4″ circle I also rounded the end in a 4″ circle. Easier than it looked, I drew out a 4″ circle on a piece of graph paper, drew a tangent to the outside of the circle to determine placement of lines on the wood to guide shaving it down. I did the work with a spokeshave followed by sanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That’s it for now. Next steps will be to make the platform supports, add G10 threaded inserts to attach the windlass bracket, and pattern our new drifter attachment. It’s beginning to finally feel like I might finish this thing!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The bowsprit has been sitting quietly while we accomplished a few other tasks, like making new handrails, cutting starboard (plastic) bases for the 4 dorades,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5532,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-teak-decks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.svyohelah.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.svyohelah.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.svyohelah.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.svyohelah.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.svyohelah.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5518"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.svyohelah.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5538,"href":"https:\/\/www.svyohelah.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5518\/revisions\/5538"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.svyohelah.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.svyohelah.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.svyohelah.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.svyohelah.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}