Mast Cutting

[acaron41120]

What is the best method of cutting the top portion of a mast square? I do all my building using hand tools and I've managed it but it was very difficult. I have used single edge razors and Exacto knives followed by sanding. What do you experienced builders do? Thanks in advance.

[glbarlow]

Work the other direction, start with square stock and round it below. An Ibex finger plane is a great tool and another option 

[druxey]

Glenn has it right. You start with a square section piece of wood, then make the round part by planing it eight-square, then sand it round. To make a round dowel square means that the square part will be too small in section.

[VTHokiEE]

1 hour ago, glbarlow said:

square stock and round it below

I've finally stated making use of a plane that I picked up ages ago and next time I have to build a mast I plan on doing this. Forgive my ignorance of using a plane, but how do you properly start the cut midway into the piece? I'm currently taking full lengths off of parts - side note using a plane is great fun it turns out.

[rlwhitt]

I could be wrong, but I'm guessing the OP means cutting a smaller square section at the top for fitting a mast top or some such.  Telling him to start with a square and round what's below will be a little difficult if the round section is bigger.  I had the same issue and just made a center mark and drew the proper size square around it and whittled with an exacto.  Like the OP, I don't have anything but hand tools, but I'd be interested in more accurate techniques myself.

[acaron41120]

Showing my ignorance with using planes here but if I understand correctly, I start with a square piece of wood stock that's almost the correct size of the mast; ie. 8mm round; then cut down the square piece to the correct size and then finger plane it until close to round and finish by sanding it round. What about starting with a square piece, cut it down do the correct size for the top of the mast and from there insert it in my drill and use the drill like a lathe and sand it round using my sanding stick? I think I'd feel better doing that. Would that work?

[barkeater]

Microfiles (flat) work well for squaring up the cap. Agree, that if you are starting with a square and then tapering to a round, your cap has to be cut down to be smaller than the tapered mast so it does not get you out of cutting it down. If you start with a square piece, just round it, taper and then square up your cap. Alternatively, you could just taper a dowel but just be sure it is straight and not warped before you start.

Richard

[Jaager]

2 hours ago, acaron41120 said:

I have used single edge razors and Exacto knives

Using either to do the job of a plane will probably not be a rewarding experience.  A plane is designed to limit the depth of cut.

 

40 minutes ago, acaron41120 said:

What about starting with a square piece, cut it down do the correct size for the top of the mast and from there insert it in my drill and use the drill like a lathe and sand it round using my sanding stick? I think I'd feel better doing that. Would that work?

The hounds region is usually smaller than the round.   Use the mast required square as the chucked section and after the rounding, work the square section down to the correct square/ rectangular cross section.  

I would probably use the top of my vise jaws as my depth stop.

 

As for your "Would that work?" question:  i.e.  hand planing to octagonal ( or whatever a 16 sided polygon is named) and then sanding  vs starting with a square and using a sanding function to do all of the cutting,

(putting on my professor hat) =  start with two identical sticks - make your mast using a plane on one and use the drill as a lathe and use a sanding stick as a very shallow cutting turning chisel on the other and give us the result of your experiment.    My imagination tells me that using a sanding stick (lots of sanding sticks probably) will take significantly longer?

[glbarlow]

1 hour ago, rlwhitt said:

start with a square and round what's below will be a little difficult if the round section is bigger.

The round part wouldn’t be bigger at the top of the mast. Using square stock and the 7-10-7 ratio to do the rounding is a common method used by many. 

[glbarlow]

2 hours ago, acaron41120 said:

cut it down do the correct size for the top of the mast and from there insert it in my drill and use the drill like a lathe and sand it round using my sanding stick?

As Druxey notes it’s best to apply the 7-10-7 ratio to first shave it to an approximate octagon then round it from there. It’s not nearly as hard as it sounds. This keeps everything in the proper proportion. Plenty of posts in this method. In describe some in my Cheerful log regarding the bowsprit. That was my first time too. 

Edited April 19, 2023 by glbarlow

[glbarlow]

2 hours ago, VTHokiEE said:

how do you properly start the cut midway into the piece?

With a good planer like the Ibex finger plane you just lightly start it were you want it then push forward. The plane will start shallow then cut to the blade depth. Sort of like starting a cheese slicer in the middle of the block of cheese. 
 

Hard to describe as it’s a feel thing, practice on some scrap and you’ll have in no time with your skills. 

 

[druxey]

It's a fallacy that one needs to turn a mast or spar! After all, full size masts and yards are shaped with hand tools, not on an enormous lathe. Also, in model work, thinner pieces will flex too much and possibly snap if turned, unless well supported.

[allanyed]

 

17 minutes ago, druxey said:

thinner pieces will flex too much

 I have tried turning these in the past and the flexing is far too much to control.  On the other hand I have found that an octagon or hexadecagon shaped rod can be spun on a lathe and sanded by wrapping a piece of sand paper around the piece and moving it along the length as flexing is not a concern.  The masts taper from the partners downward and upward so continual checks are needed to get to the proper diameters along its length.

Allan

[Roger Pellett]

Not mentioned, is that the longitudinal  SHAPE of the spar can be more easily layed out and cut, planed, etc. when it is a square cross section prism than a cylinder.  Once the square cross section block is cut to the correct shape it is not difficult to make it round by using the 7:10 rule.  Trying to turn or sand the correct longitudinal shape into a cylindrical dowel  is much harder.

 

Roger

[Dr PR]

I find a coarse flat file to be the best tool to use for reducing the top section above the hounds (where the crosstrees fit) of a larger diameter mast. Then for the very top tenon that fits into the cap I use a hobby knife and small fine toothed files. I take measurements often to avoid removing too much wood.

 

As for making masts from square stock, I had heard others say this was the way to go. I had always chucked dowels into a drill and used sandpaper to slowly grind the piece into shape. But on my last build I decided to start with a square piece and cut it down to size. First I cut the square piece down to the desired taper of the mast. Then I used a small plane to shave off bits of the corners to create the octagonal shape. Then I shaved off the corners of the octagon to get 16 sides. Then I chucked it into a drill and used sandpaper for the final shaping.

 

This was MUCH faster and easier than trying to reduce the round dowel! MUCH!! Now I understand why all of the experienced modellers use this technique. It worked the first time and was a lot of fun.

 

I have posted pictures and a description of the process here:

 

https://modelshipworld.com/topic/19611-albatros-by-dr-pr-mantua-scale-148-revenue-cutter-kitbash-about-1815/?do=findComment&comment=908539

 

Also note that I kept the mast square under the hounds for the cheeks to fit onto. You can't do this if you start with a round dowel.

 

Then I shaped the top, including cutting it octagonal just for show.

 

Edited April 20, 2023 by Dr PR

[Joseph Schmidt]

On 4/19/2023 at 1:39 PM, druxey said:

It's a fallacy that one needs to turn a mast or spar! After all, full size masts and yards are shaped with hand tools, not on an enormous lathe. Also, in model work, thinner pieces will flex too much and possibly snap if turned, unless well supported.

NEEDS to turn maybe not. Did they? This from a company I worked for that made this lathe.

 

[Roger Pellett]

BI have read that the masts for the large multimasted American Schooners c 1880-1918 were single piece made from very large Douglas Fir logs that were shipped to the East Coast from the Pacific NW on specially built rail cars.  These could have been turned on equipment like the one shown in Joseph’s post.

 

Roger

Edited April 22, 2023 by Roger Pellett

[glbarlow]

On 4/19/2023 at 11:16 PM, Dr PR said:

Then I used a small plane to shave off bits of the corners to create the octagonal shape.

This is the purpose of the 7-10-7 marking process. Marking the square stock with this ratio of lines simply makes sure you plane equal amounts of each corner and not misshape the wood while rounding it. 

[Bob Cleek]

On 4/22/2023 at 10:23 AM, Roger Pellett said:

BI have read that the masts for the large multimasted American Schooners c 1880-1918 were single piece made from very large Douglas Fir logs that were shipped to the East Coast from the Pacific NW on specially built rail cars.  These could have been turned on equipment like the one shown in Joseph’s post.

 

Roger

At the end of the Nineteenth Century, at least, they were regularly turning large masts and spars on lathes, as indicated by the documentation posted above. As I recall when Ernie Gann (Fate is the Hunter author) donated the new spars for Hal Sommer's restoration of Wanderbird (Elbe No.5) in the early 'seventies, they came from a couple of Doug firs on Gann's ranch up near Seattle, Washington and were turned on a big spar lathe they still had operating up there. They were then shipped down to Sausalito, California where they were stepped into the vessel. 

 

The largest spar lathe I know of in operation today is up in Aberdeen, Washington. It's got a capacity of 122 feet long and owned by The Spar Shop and is the go-to place for large spars. They have their own forest resources for Doug fir and have done the spars on vessels like Amistad. Spar Shop at the Historical Seaport (woodweb.com)

 

 

A big prime Doug fir like this one is valued in the neighborhood of $100,000! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Large metal-working lathes, particularly for turning large artillery barrels like the 16" Iowa class battleship guns, were also a standard feature of naval shipyards. A few of these have been picked up as surplus and also have been used to turn masts and spars.

 

Amazing swarf coming off this metal lathe:

 

[Roger Pellett]

 Huge lathes are also still required for propeller shafts.

Edited May 2, 2023 by Roger Pellett

[wefalck]

The method to be used surely also depends on the size of your model spar/mast. Planing something only of a few millimetres in diameter may be physically difficult. I gather a starting dimension of 4 mm across would be about the minimum for planing.

 

Starting with a square stick allows for easy 'indexing' during work. People use a jig in which the stick rests on a corner so that one work down the opposite corner. This leads you quickly to an octogon. Resting the stick now on the corners of the octogon allows you to work it down quickly to a 16-sided stick (hexakaidecagonal stick).

 

Turning long, slender pieces requires a steady to remove flexing. Travelling steady are difficult to use on wood, because they may leave marks, but a fixed steady is easy to contrive for a wood-lathe. In fact a thick piece of cardboard with an appropriate sized hole in it will be sufficient and was often used by old-time machinists. Old lathes did have sometimes a steady to which such cardboard pieces could be clamped.

 

In fact, I have used the flexing in order to produce spars that taper in both directions.

 

[Bob Cleek]

12 hours ago, wefalck said:

Resting the stick now on the corners of the octogon allows you to work it down quickly to a 16-sided stick (hexakaidecagonal stick).

And today's internet new vocabulary word of the day award goes to Eberhard!  

 

Thanks for occasioning an interesting educational detour. I learn something new every day!  

 

"In mathematics, a hexadecagon (sometimes called a hexakaidecon or 16-gon) is a sixteen-sided polygon.

A regular hexadecagon is a hexadecagon in which all angles are equal and all sides are congruent. Its Schlafi symbol is {16} and can be constructed as a truncated octagon, t{8}, and a twice-truncated square tt{4}. A truncated hexadecagon, t{16}, is a triacontadigon.

 

Hexadecagon - Wikipedia"

 

 

 

Hexadecagon - Wikipedia

[mtaylor]

3 hours ago, Bob Cleek said:

And today's internet new vocabulary word of the day award goes to Eberhard!  

 

Thanks for occasioning an interesting educational detour. I learn something new every day!  

 

"IHexadecagon - Wikipedia

 

Indeed.   MSW is literally a fount of knowledge.

[Dr PR]

Bob,

 

Your "big prime Doug fir" in the photo in post #19 appears to be only about 3 feet diameter. When I moved to Oregon in the 1970s loggers scoffed at such "toothpicks" - they weren't worth bothering with. A really BIG Douglas fir was about 15-17 feet diameter. Each piece was hauled out of the forest on a single railroad car. We used to see a single tree going down the road on three log trucks. One carried the huge base. The next carried the large second piece an perhaps the top. And the third truck carried two to four pieces from just below the top.

 

But now they have cut most of the big trees, and what few are left are locked up in wilderness areas. Now we see trucks loaded with dozens of sticks less than a foot diameter. They are chipped to make "oriented strand board," a fancy term for garbage.

 

A 120 foot long 3 foot diameter log has about 10,000 board feet. Douglas fir is currently selling at about $700-$800 per thousand board feet (milled). So an ordinary log that size would sell for less than $7000 to $8000. However, there is a premium paid for long poles (they are really difficult to get out of the forest on typical sharp curved logging roads). And really clear logs from trees with no lower limbs (knots) bring a high price for making plywood veneer (I worked many years automating plywood lathes). A $100,000 tree would be VERY special!

[Bob Cleek]

3 hours ago, Dr PR said:

Bob,

 

Your "big prime Doug fir" in the photo in post #19 appears to be only about 3 feet diameter. When I moved to Oregon in the 1970s loggers scoffed at such "toothpicks" - they weren't worth bothering with. A really BIG Douglas fir was about 15-17 feet diameter. Each piece was hauled out of the forest on a single railroad car. We used to see a single tree going down the road on three log trucks. One carried the huge base. The next carried the large second piece an perhaps the top. And the third truck carried two to four pieces from just below the top.

 

But now they have cut most of the big trees, and what few are left are locked up in wilderness areas. Now we see trucks loaded with dozens of sticks less than a foot diameter. They are chipped to make "oriented strand board," a fancy term for garbage.

 

A 120 foot long 3 foot diameter log has about 10,000 board feet. Douglas fir is currently selling at about $700-$800 per thousand board feet (milled). So an ordinary log that size would sell for less than $7000 to $8000. However, there is a premium paid for long poles (they are really difficult to get out of the forest on typical sharp curved logging roads). And really clear logs from trees with no lower limbs (knots) bring a high price for making plywood veneer (I worked many years automating plywood lathes). A $100,000 tree would be VERY special!

True dat! In the late '70's, I lived in the mixed second growth redwood and Doug fir coastal forest in Northern CA, I remember seeing huge redwoods harvested, too, but nothing like what they were cutting in the late 1800's. I looked it up and discovered that today only 29 sawmills remain in California, along with eight sawmills that are still standing but inactive. In addition, there are 112 sites in California where sawmills once operated. The NWP RR out of Eureka that primarily hauled milled redwood south is no more and the semi's hauling milled lumber are getting scarcer. The monster Georgia Pacific mill in Fort Bragg is no longer operating. We still see some redwoods and Doug firs getting hauled north to the few small mills still operating, but it's "odds and ends" from one or two felled at a time or deadfalls. In the '70's we still had log trucks with three or four trunks on them, but now it's almost always small stuff. I think the big trees are being cut up in Canada now days. (And thanks to climate change, there's tons of dead yellow cedar standing all along the coast from BC to Alaska, fully dried and dead standing is still harvestable for about 90 years, but nobody seems to be able to get to it to harvest it economically.)

 

The $100,000 value of the pictured Doug fir was the quote from the website and it may be their exaggeration. I don't know diddly about the value of raw timber, but from what they said, it was a VERY special tree. In order to turn a tree into a mast, the tree has to be perfect. The growth rings, which taper successively smaller from bottom to top, have to be really straight grained and tapered the same rate as the mast so that there's no grain runout when it's turned. It also has to be as relatively knot- and defect-free as possible. They have to find the tree standing, get a permit to cut it, and go in and fell it and haul it out without damaging the wood. The economies of harvesting in quantity don't apply. As you know, that's really prime stuff. Way too good for two by fours!

 

From this:

 

 

 

To this:

 

 

 

To this.

 

 

 

From 1970's:

 

 

To 2020's:

 

So it goes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 4, 2023 by Bob Cleek

[wefalck]

Good (hard)wood is only to some degree a renewable resource - it takes obviously centuries to replenish it not just decades ... we have taken out too much over the past two or three centuries.

[Dr PR]

Bob,

 

While the board feet in the log might not be worth $100,000, by the time they go through the selection process, then get a long log like that into the shop and do the processing into a mast the total cost might well be that high.