Making a rough and ready caulking iron

[Larks]

A little while ago I had a play with making up some caulking mallets:

http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthre...let-for-myself

which I have finally been able to put to good use caulking the garboard seam of my strip planked H28.

I had shouted myself a #4 caulking iron at the wooden boat show in Tassie last year as the seam is quite wide and this appeared the most suitable for the job, however now that I am doing it I also need a narrower iron for the stern post seam. It's not a big area to do, about 5' either side, so I really just need something pretty basic to do the job.

However, being Sunday I thought I'd have a bit of a play making one up out of whatever I could find laying around the shed for a bit of fun, so here it is:

I started out with a steel peg that the concreters had left here when doing the driveway:



The plan was to slot the end of it for a bit of plate to slide into so I cut it at one of the holes thinking that it would give me a nice start down the centreline, however it was off centre slightly so I cut my own slot about 1/2" doen the end of the piece that I'd cut off.

I cut a corresponding slot for the peg into a bit of flat bar




so that it could slot together quite firmly like this:




get rid of a bit of rust around the edges:




slap on a bit of a weld around the plate:




A washer on the end to broaden the striking surface:

[Larks]

With all put together here's what I had:

[Larks]

However, the focus was on useability and functionality, so time to set to it with a grinder and it didn't take much to knock the edges off and roughly shape it down to this:




I little more grinding and a couple of fine sanding discs and I reckon this is good enough to do the job.



I'm sure that I could get it more uniform and tidier if I spent more time on it but there's no need, it's comfortable in the hand and it works just perfectly for what I need:







I might look a little over tooled with just a garboard seam to caulk, but it's been a bit of fun putting this gear together and working out how to do it.

Here's a shot of the mallets that I finished as well, one from a piece of Blackbean kindly donated by Peter Sibley, the bigger one (my farvourite and the last one that I turned) in a beautiful piece of rosewood, also from Peter, and the other from a piece of "wenge". I have another smaller "wenge" one to finish yet.

[WX]

Looks like a bought one Greg, nicely done.

[G.Sherman]

I used a masonry chisel (the brick splitting type) and ground down the the sharpened edge. Took twenty minutes…

[Larks]

I used a masonry chisel (the brick splitting type) and ground down the the sharpened edge. Took twenty minutes…

I did think of that, but I still need my bolsters (brick splitting masonry chisels) so they didn't come under the heading of "scrap around the shed" for me.

[G.Sherman]

I just bought one and whacked it into submission....

[Bob Cleek]

Beautiful mallets! You must be the only caulker in the world with three mallets and only two irons!

[Larks]

Beautiful mallets! You must be the only caulker in the world with three mallets and only two irons!

Thanks Bob, sad isn't it, but even more sadly it's four now, I finished the small one last night. Though I certainly wouldn't call myself a caulker, one garboard seam would not a caulker make............. I suspect.

[Duncan Gibbs]

Great work Greg!