wood mast

[signs]

can someone tell me what kind of wood is sutiable for making a solid mast

[John of Phoenix]

Sitka spruce is considered ideal for spars because of its strength and light weight. I'm sure you can use other wood, but those are the characteristics you're looking for.

[casem]

I see Douglass fir recommended alot. That's what I used on my small (15') boat.

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

Sitka spruce thats it perfect mast wood

[Meerkat]

I'm going to have to build spars for my Whilly Boat, so this is a very appropriate topic, even if early... Should they be solid or hollow (at least the mast(s)?). I've contemplated whether or not to buy them already built too (in wood, not aluminimum). I know there's at least one outfit that markets nationally that has some patented variation on a bird's mouth technique...

Sitka Spruce is awefully expensive and so too is Fir now. I wonder if I can smuggle some down from Canada ;)

[EdenRose]

Meerkat,

Solid fir, lots around here, is what I am using.
The size you need will not be too heavy.
How large (diameter) is the Whilly mast at its
widest point?

[gaffman]

I've spent a considerable amount of time with this same issue for my Frienship sloop. You can either order Sitka Spuce from the west coast, about 9 bucks a foot and make hollow mast or you can make it out of douglas fir which isn't cheap either if you get the good stuff. OR, you can take a trip to Maine and cut down a tree, Black Spruce, and fashion your mast. Bud MacIntosh does a great job explaining how to make a solid mast in his book.

[Meerkat]

Originally posted by EdenRose:
Meerkat,

Solid fir, lots around here, is what I am using.
The size you need will not be too heavy.
How large (diameter) is the Whilly mast at its
widest point?ER; sorry just guessing, but I think for the gunter rig, the mast is ~2-1/2". Plans are down at Barrett's. If that seems wrong, I can let you know next week probably.

Spars... eek, ick and argh!

[John B]

Doug fir ( we call it oregon ) is the bang for buck spar timber.the Spruce... gorgeous stuff that it is , is lighter but softer. I wouldn't particularly want a spruce mast for a gaff rig , for example. Too much wear and tear.

My western red cedar spinnaker pole is still going strong. bit soft.. a few prangs.
I still don't see why it couldn't be used for small spars... 4 or 5 metres long.Booms and the like. beef up the scantlings a bit...

OK. I'm ducked down now. you can chuck stuff.

[Wiley Baggins]

signs,

There are some good suggestions here, but they'll be even better with some specifics. You can make perfectly good solid masts with Big-Box store 2x4 lumber of whatever they're calling whatever species of softwood they're selling...if it's a small boat, and you use some care in selecting the material and in laminating the stuff before shaping. Bigger, more highly stressed, etc. masts are going to require more thought, more careful selection of materials, greater expenditure, etc.

Good luck!

[ion barnes]

A solid spar is not the way to go. The strength of the spar is related to the surface area and very little to its thickness. I saw an oar at the Port Townsend Wooden Boat festival(best woodenboat show I have been to yet) that was done in the bird"s mouth manner and was it ever light!! The builder also said it was incredably strong. I built a couple of model planes with rubberband power that had fuselages of 1/32 balsa sheet rolled into a 1 1/2 " tube, 2 ft. long and I never had one breakup.except when it got underfoot.OOPSY. Shift to present, on a small boat you do not want heavy spars. Otherwise go to 10 or 20ga. aluminum tube.

[Thaddeus J. Van Gilder]

The mast on my bristol channel cutter is solid longleaf yellow pine. I think it's original 1923, and it's doing well.

[Cedarhill Boatworks]

Any lumber yard can get you spruce. Won't be sitka but it will be spruce. Order more than you need and be selective. Build a nice hollow mast.

[Bruce Hooke]

For a solid mast here in New England I would probably go for local spruce -- many, many vessels have had masts made of the various species of spruce that grow in New England and the Canadian Maritimes. A solid mast in itself says that the boat is low-tech enough for Sitka Spruce to be serious overkill, as well as something of a waste of a dwindiling resource. If you know someone up in northern New England who has some spruce forest on their property then you could probably find a suitable tree in there.

Otherwise, I have not had much luck finding Spruce at my local "Orange Box" store (they just have Douglas Fir and SPF (Spruce-Pine-Fir)) but my local old-time lumberyard (L. Sweet Lumber, Providence, RI) sells rough spruce planks, which you could laminate to get a thick enough piece (they used to be called 'staging planks' but they aren't called that anymore, probably for liability & OSHA reasons). Of course if you are going to be laminating anyway, then it might well make sense to do a hollow spar.

If this is a small boat then Wiley's suggestion of just picking out the best bits from your local lumberyard's pile of 2x stock would also be a perfectly reasonable way to go.

[Gary Bergman]

From Maine to Nova Scotia an awful lot of schooners have been built using solid black spruce. They do indeed work very well.

[Meerkat]

Just as a matter of curiosity, are smallboat spars expensive to have made? I need a mast, a boom and a non-curved gunter yard. Only the mast needs to be hollow right?

[Keith Wilson]

After building a birdsmouth style hollow mast, I wouldn't build another solid mast for any boat from which I might ever remove the mast by hand. The stress is carried in the outer layer of wood anyway; the stuff in the center contributes little but weight, and lifting an 18' mast with one hand is fun. Make sure you put plugs where the gaff and boom go, and it should be as durable as a solid spar.

Honestly, I think for a small boat, (one in which a broken mast won't enganger your life) almost any sort of lumberyard softwood except cedar will do. The tensile strength and elastic modulus don't vary that much between the common commercial species, and rot-resistance isn't a high priority in this application. Spruce is a little stronger for its weight, douglas fir is heavier and stronger for a given size.

I made all the staves for the aformentioned 18' mast out of one of Knox Lumber's finest 2x12s. I ended up with a lot of sawdust and threw away or scarfed out the knots (no shortage of kindling this winter). I'd make the other spars that way too if I were you. The advantages are that you can make a lighter and very strong spar out of lower-grade wood; the disadvantage is that it's more work than shaping a solid stick.

[JimD]

So far as I know doug fir isn't really a fir tree, its a type of spruce, which is category of pine, which amounts to quibbling differences among botanists which come down to the needle arrangement or cone type of the various trees. Suffice to say evergreens make the best spars, sitka regarded as having the best strength to weight ratio. Heavy (solid) spars have a lot of inertia for better or for worse, designers hopefully understand the implications of light (hollow) vs heavy (solid). Most small light boats call for hollow masts to minimize weight and top heaviness, while booms are usually solid, (to control lift and steady boom swing?), unless of course you have a fancy boom roller reef which is hollow, and gee, now I'm sounding like an expert, which of course I'm not, :D
jimd