Last night I worked on the bowsprit in my garage again. I had tried to get the stainless steel fitting off the end last week without success. Last week I used a rubber mallet. Last night I used a small maul. It appears all I needed was a bigger hammer! It was a tight fit but it slowly gave way.
All in all the wood was in good shape. Not that it really matters as the other end is rotten. Look at the picture above. See the glue joint....yeah well it is a joint with no glue, at least not now.
With that done I picked up the sanders and started on the teak platform. I want to sand the teak down just enough to get the silver off. Here is what it looked like when I stopped last night.
Of course the left side was the side I was sanding and the right is the untouched side.
I am in the process of getting estimates to have my bowsprit made. If it is reasonable I'll go that route. If not I will make it myself. The platform I can refurbish with out much time investment, so I will do that part.
I am thinking that I might have enough good wood left from the original bowsprit I might be able to make a boom cradle...which the boat is missing. We'll see!
Bud Taplin sells just about everything for the Westsail, including the Bowsprit.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.westsail.com/b-rails.html
The teak is beautiful all sanded and new looking. Maybe ours will look like that one day:D.
Dani
Hey Dani,
ReplyDeleteI'm lucky Bud lives just a few miles from me! I have already purchased a few items from him.I had Bud do the survey for me. I try to do as much of the work I can to help preserve our cash!
Just and FYI I found that my bowsprit did not match all the drawings as far as total length. Mine is 9'-3 1/4" the West sail drawing I have shows it to be about 9'-8".
Wow, you are lucky he lives so close! I am totally with you on DIY projects. If we had paid someone to do all of the work on our boat it would easy have cost 3-4 times as much AND it wouldn't have been done as well.
DeleteWe are definitely going to look at our bow sprit soon, Tate is thinking of going Stainless for the beam. It's pricey, but you only have to do it once.
Dani
I agree that you only have to do it once....but the look of a wood bowsprit on these boats is just to good for me to pass up on. Besides this new one should last even longer than the first one! But each his (or her) own!
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