Sparmaking

This is a five-day course ending Friday

Wooden spars are a sight to behold and complement almost any harbor in which they are found. Rick will guide you through the process of building solid and hollow spars. Building your own mast and boom, combined with fabricating some simple hardware, is a wonderful project that can save you money, and bring you the satisfaction of doing it yourself.

One of the projects undertaken by students in this course will be a mast built using the eight-stave, bird’s-mouth method used by many boatbuilders for its simplicity and strength. You’ll also turn out, for other boats, some solid-wood spars that will require little or no gluing and can be easily shaped with hand tools.
You will start the week talking about wood selection, cutting scarf joints, building a spar bench, gluing up with epoxy, and sharpening hand planes. Time will be dedicated to looking over plans and having a real understanding of how masts function and are supported.

Throughout the week, Rick will touch on other spar construction techniques. Different spars as well as hardware details will be discussed. Time will be spent on the water looking at how different rigs work in their environment. This should lay the foundation for whatever rig style you choose. The course will close with a few coats of varnish and a discussion of maintaining your new rig for years to come. This week promises to be a full one, so come ready to make plenty of shavings and turn out beautiful wooden spars.

* While we will be building spars for some WBS fleet boats, you are encouraged to bring your own projects with you to this course. Please contact us for more information, we are happy to help source the wood for your spar project!