Winter Cover

Last winter was the first time I had to deal with a boat (no less a wooden boat) in wet storage. I only reached Huntington on November 24th, so I didn't have much time to prepare for the onslaught of the Winter of 2010 -- the year the word 'Snowmageddon' was coined.

I blogged about it at the time, and vowed to make a winter cover for this year, to avoid having to shovel the poor Blue Moon, as we did -- seemingly on a weekly basis -- last year.

Shoveling a foot of snow off the Blue Moon
Winter 2010

The plan was to use my mom's old sewing machine to make one of those lush, full-length covers you see on some boats. However, after pricing the amount of Sunbrella I'd need, and assessing all the work involved (sewing is NOT my favorite craft), I decided to try something a bit simpler.

I found a supplier of American-made, 18oz, treated canvas and purchased a 12x12 and 8x10 tarp from Amazon. The quality of the American Canvas tarp is really outstanding, I must say. The canvas itself is thick, heavy, and treated with something or other to make it water resistant. The seams are well sewn, and the brass grommets are heavily reinforced. It's weight, I thought, would prevent it from flogging itself to death, as I've seen happen with lighter material in heavy winds. And we do get some heavy winds here, in winter.

American Canvas tarp

The 12x12 tarp has 4 grommets on each side; the 8x10 has 4 grommets on the long side and 3 on the short. There were two problems to be solved:

1. how to fasten the edges of the tarp to the side deck
2. how to suspend the tarp over the boom, so as to best shed snow

The tarps were both long enough so that I could fasten the edges to the rail. However, when it came time to install the tarps, I didn't like the idea of screwing 6 eye straps (each side) into the Blue Moon's rail. First, I didn't think they would look very good, unless I could find nice bronze ones, perhaps. Second, they would be murder on the topsides of any boat we rafted up to. I'd also have to de-rig my running backstays, but that wouldn't be too much bother. 

So, as a trial, I decided to tie the tarp down inside the rail. There were plenty of places to tie it down inside.

For ribs, to hold the tarp up and out under snow load, I decided to use a trick recommended on the Wooden Boat Forum, which is to use PVC pipe. I forgot to take any pictures of this, but you can see the one test 'rib' in the photo below. I wasn't sure what size pipe to use, so I started with just one 1" rib. If it works, I'll add more later.

So, after trying various configurations of the tarps, I ended up with Configuration #1, below. I wasn't 100% happy with it. Ideally I'd like to close that gap in the middle between the two tarps, but this arrangement gave good coverage for both the cockpit and the anchor well in the bow. I decided to give it a try for the first snow.

Configuration #1 - note hoop in middle

Another problem, obviously, is the opening at the back. However the bow is pointing to the west and our prevailing winds are from the southwest, so I was hoping this opening would not let too much snow in.

Oh, the bliss of ignorance!

Over stern

This week, in mid January, we finally had our first snow, about 2 inches. Quite a difference from last year, and I'm not complaining.

After 1st snow

For the most part, the snow is on the tarp, rather than on my paint, so that is a success... Here in the east, the snow is quite dirty. It looks white, but in reality, there is a lot of grit and grime embedded in the snow. When it melts, it leaves behind a dirty residue. The primary goal of the tarps is to keep the sun and grime off my poor paint. In this regard, I'll give it a grade of Not Bad.

Where's my hoop?

However, I did get a good dusting of snow in the cockpit, and I presume in the anchor well (I didn't climb onboard to check.) I'm not sure if it was the opening, or the fact that snow can blow under the edges of the canvas. I guess I should have gotten out of bed at 2am and gone down to the boat with a flashlight to see which way the snow was blowing in, but my alarm didn't go off (yeah, right!)

A bit of snow drifted inside

However, there certainly would have been more snow in the cockpit without the cover, so I'll have to also give this a Not Bad grade.

Less successful was the PVC rib or batten. The 1" pipe just wasn't strong enough, I guess.

As soon as the snow melts off (we're due for some rain tonight), I'm going to try reconfiguring the tarps using the information gathered with this trial. For Configuration #2, I'm going to try:

• thicker PVC pipe for the ribs... the thickest I can bend
• 2 sets of ribs, instead of just one
• close up the gap between the tarps
• put something over the opening at the stern... probably one of my small, home-made tarps. 

I'm still not keen on putting eye straps on the rail... that will have to wait to Configuration #3, at least. 

If you have any clever ideas to share, particularly about how to hold the edges of the tarp down to the rail without a bunch of eye pads, I'd love to hear them.

Spring is coming, right???


>>> Next Episode:

Mark III Block Update

Time for another classic "How Not To" blog: an update on my Mark III block.

I built this block back in early spring and blogged about building it here. As you may recall, I called it the Mark III because it was the third version of a block cut from glued up maple stock. This block represented the culmination of a heck of a lot of work, and I was darn proud of it.

As reported, I put it into service as my main sheet block. As such, it was shackled to a pad eye on the bridge deck of the Blue Moon. It was more or less constantly exposed to the sun and elements, but because of it's position on deck, it never simply sat in water. If it got rained on, it dried out swiftly as soon as the sun came out.

I did not varnish the maple, just gave it the linseed oil bath much recommended on the Wooden Boat Forum.

For awhile, it looked pretty good.

Brand new block

But by the end of August, I had a bumper crop of mildew growing on the block. Quite disgusting.

After one summer in the sun and rain

Even worse, one of the glue joints had failed, although the rope strop held the block together so it didn't explode under tension.

Failed glue joint

Actually, the failed joint came as no surprise. As I've mentioned since building this block, I've been studying basic woodworking, including basic joinery. This joint breaks one of the cardinal rules of glue joints: never glue to end grain. 

If you study the direction of the grain in the original glued up blank, you can see that the spacers -- the small strips of wood between the larger cheeks -- are glued on their end grain. They should have been turned 90 degrees, so the glue joint would have been long grain to long grain. 

Ah well. Luckily I figured this out before I started building my Mark IV oak blocks, so I was more or less expecting the joints to fail, sooner or later. The fact that they failed within one summer shows how important it is to get the joints right.

Spacers are glued on end grain

The remaining mystery was, why did the maple block grow such a good crop of mildew, when the oak blocks didn't?

The photo below was taken after a summer of use in much the same environment. It looks very much the same as it did when it was brand new. 

The oak block had the same linseed oil finish, and the same rope strop. What was the difference?

No mildew on the Mark IV oak block

I asked this question on the Wooden Boat Forum, and David from Harbor Woodworks in Portland, OR was kind enough to answer it. 

The answer is that maple wood contains too much food (sugar, probably) for fungus to resist. With heat and a bit of moisture, they flock to the dinner table like deadbeat relatives at Thanksgiving. 

Other woods, such as teak, mahogany, black locust, cherry, walnut, white oak, sapele, and khaya don't have this problem. Which explains why the oak blocks remained mildew free.

So, if the value of a project can be measured by lessons learned, I have to count my Mark III block project as a complete success!

So many lessons... so little time!

>>> Next Episode: Winter Cover

Getting Up In The World

I don't know about you, but I have a particular talent for losing halyards. I don't know how it happens, but invariably it happens fast. One minute you have a perfectly good topping lift. The next you have a coil of rope in your hands and an empty sheave, far, far above your head, spinning in the wind.

Longtime readers of this blog will remember that Helena and I have already experimented with home-made bosun's chairs. It was so much fun that Helena insisted on giving it a go.

Home Made Bosun Chair
photo jalmberg

This will look dodgy to some people, but actually it's quite safe. The seat is a very sturdy plank, and the rope that holds it up is crossed and tied under the seat. There's some extra rope coiled up and tied under the seat to keep it from catching on things, so it looks a bit messier than it is.

In the impossible case of the seat cracking, the crossed line would hold the thing together long enough to get the victim -- I mean worker -- down safely.

Add a 6x block and tackle, a safety harness attached around the mast, one halyard for the chair and another for the safety harness. Toss in a healthy dose of common sense and you are in business.

The big problem with this approach is the 6X block and tackle you need to hoist a full grown person. Even on my short-masted boat, this means threading 200 feet of line through 2 triple blocks. And you can't just thread the line any old way. Because of friction, the line has to follow a specific route through the sheaves that I can't remember without pulling out the books.

In short, the bosun chair is the best way to get to the masthead, but it's an all day project. I wanted something simpler and quicker.

The inspiration for this project came from watching a fellow sailor climb to the top of his very tall mast on an ordinary household aluminum extension ladder. Well, duh! I thought. How simple is that.

That got me thinking of ladders, but I wanted something a little more portable. Something I could stow away down below in case of emergencies far from home and ladders. Then one day, I was thumbing through my "Ashley Book of Knots", and found exactly what I was looking for.

The solution was on the very last page of the book, in fact:

Rope Ladder from Ashley Book of Knots

I could just imagine myself as that happy tar, scampering up into the rigging...

The ingredients for this project are:

• enough 1/2" line to go up and down the mast, with enough left over to tie securely. I started with 100' for my 27' mast, so I had plenty
• enough oak dowel stock to make the rungs. I bought 3' lengths of 1" round stock from Home Depot and cut them in half to make 18" rungs.
• tarred marline for the lashings. I used #18 tarred nylon since I have several miles of it lying around
• a thimble for the top.

The rope and dowel are probably oversized for strength, but you want something thick enough to hold on to. The 1/2" line and 1" rungs felt just right for my particular death grip.

I started by lashing the thimble into the middle of the line, then pre-marked the position of the 15 rungs on both parts of the 'ladder'. To do this, you need to take as much of the stretch out of the line as possible. I tied the thimble to a work bench and stretched out the two parts on the floor, parallel to each other. Then I marked off the positions of the rungs, 18" apart, on both lines.

Laying the two lines out on the floor for marking...
The stretch needs to be taken out of both lines evenly before marking.

In retrospect, I'd probably reduce the rung spacing a bit -- perhaps to 14" -- but 18" is fine. 

Once the rungs were marked off, it was time to start lashing. I tried various ways to do this, but the easiest was to suspend the ladder from the ceiling and work on it standing up.

The first couple rungs

At this point, some you are probably saying, Whoa! Lashings?!?! NO WAY I'M TRUSTING MY VALUABLE 200LB CARCASS TO SOME DANG LASHINGS!

Some simple math will show it's perfectly safe. #18 tarred nylon has a breaking strength of 170 lbs. If you put 10 turns in your lashings, as I did, the lashing should be good for 3400 lbs -- enough to hold even the loudest member at the yacht club bar. (Think about it... each turn is 2 strands... one on one side, and one on the other, so 20 strands all together.)

I forgot to take a picture of this, but to prevent the rung from rolling, I used a half-round rasp to cut a shallow, round notch in each end of the rung. The line is laid in this notch, and then the line and rung are lashed together with 10 good, tight turns.

Here are front and back photos of the lashings.

Back... you can sort of see how the line is recessed into the
smooth, round notch

Front. Notice how the lashings are crossed

I used a simple cross lashing that I also found in Ashley. I suggest you find a copy in the library and study his instructions which are better than I can provide here.

As a side note, I gave all the rungs several good rubbings with linseed oil before lashing them on. They don't really need much protection, but I like the smell and look of linseed oil.

After you've got a few rungs lashed on, it gets a bit unwieldy. I found it best to keep the part I was working on hanging as straight as possible, with the rest of it out of the way.

Plenty of light and a place to hang things is essential.
Note the tape on both lines showing the rung positions

About half-way through the project, I discovered a quick and easy way to make the loose end of the rung fast to the ladder while you lash the other end. I used the famous Constrictor Knot to lash one end in place temporarily (see photo above), then lashed the other side. It's fast and easy to tie and release the constrictor knot so you can use the same bit of marline over and over again. It's impossible to lash the rung unless the other end is held steady.

Left side temporarily held by constrictor knot,
while the other side is lashed

As my work companion Port shows, this job gets a bit tedious after awhile, so some music or your favorite podcast will help pass the time. (Starboard never hangs around when work is underway...)

By the time you are done, you will have perfected your lashing skills, and if you are like me, will be raring to try it out.

On a calm summer weekday (to minimize powerboat traffic), with Helena in the chase boat, and 911 programmed into speed dial on her cell phone, I proceeded to hoist my lovely ladder up the Blue Moon's mast.

The ladder hoisted and steadied by bridle to bow

Rigging the ladder took a bit of experimentation to get right. I suppose a fit, 20-something could just climb straight up it with no problem, but I wanted it to be a bit more secure than that.

First, I discovered you want the ladder to hang at a bit of angle from the mast. This makes it a lot easier and less scary to climb. Trust me.

Taking the stretch out of the ladder

You also want to tie it down tight, to take the stretch out of it. I tied the ends down tightly in my cockpit, one on either side of the boom.

Then, to put even more tension on the ladder, and to prevent it from twisting, I lashed a kind of bridle to the ladder and tied the bridle off on the Sampson post in the bow.  See the bridle in the two pictures above.

With these precautions in place, the ladder was stiff and easy to climb, even for an old geezer like me.

Getting that halyard back up again

Even with all that tension, the ladder moves in towards the mast as you go up, so you can easily reach it from the ladder.

In the photo above you can see that the halyard has also stretched, so the head of the ladder is too far below the masthead. As you take the stretch out of the system, be sure to re-tighten the halyard so the head of the ladder ends up at the masthead. A lesson for next time...

And that was that! Now that I know how to rig it, the next time, it will take about 10 minutes to hoist and secure. Very salty looking and the envy of my yacht club.



>>> Next Episode: Mark III Block Update

Painting Stem-to-Stern

Once upon a time, Zeus had a really bad headache. Zeus didn't make the connection, but his headache started about 9 months after he'd had his way with a dangerously clever goddess named Metis... and swallowed her.

Health insurance being hard to come by, even for the Lord of the Universe, Zeus turned to the wily Prometheus for medical advice. (This was before Zeus had enough of Prometheus's practical jokes and chained him to a rock.)

"Oh, wily Prometheus," Zeus moaned in agony. "Tell me what's wrong with my old head."

Not one to waste time theorizing, Prometheus whacked Zeus's head with the sharp end of an axe, and thus was Athena born, springing from Zeus's forehead with a shout.

This summer, I've also been giving painful 'birth' to an idea, buy whenever I started groaning about my poor over-worked brain, I remembered Zeus. At least it wasn't that bad!

As I think I've mentioned before, I've been working on my first iPhone app. Working 10 hours a day, 6 days a week... (No, I'm not exaggerating, Helena.) Slaving away, in fact... with nary an hour for sailing or boat building.

But I'm finally done! Sent it off to the elves at Apple for what they ominously call a 'Review', and now I'm twiddling my thumbs, waiting to see if they sink it with a list of required revisions, or let it sail through, as it deserves.

A perfect time, in other words, to catch up on my blog.

Not that I've been completely idle in the boat department. The Blue Moon absolutely needed a stem to stern paint job, which I was determined to finish before the snow flew, no matter what.

The last time the Blue Moon had seen a paint brush was back in Steinhatchee, FL, where Bob (previous owner) and Helena and I had given her a pretty good scraping and painting. But a lot of sun has beaten on  her poor decks since then, and cracks had begun to appear.

I had used Interlux Brightside on the BM's topsides and deck -- a mistake I now think. Brightside is a great paint, but I now think it's better suited to stable fiberglass hulls. It's a bit too shiny and brittle for the Blue Moon's 3/4" plywood deck. I thought a more traditional oil-based paint would stay a bit more flexible, and thus crack less, so I decided to try the very traditional Kirby marine paint.

I'd already used Kirby paint on my spars, this spring, and discovered that it took forever to dry in cold, damp weather. So I picked a hot, dry weather window in the middle of summer to paint the deck.

But first I had to scrape and sand, of course. Did I mention I picked a hot, dry week? Luckily, the Ketewomoke Yacht Club has a beer machine with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of ice-cold dollar beers. Something that the snooty yacht club down the harbor doesn't have (ha, ha!)

Of course, once you start picking at little cracks, you somehow always end up with big cracks... And yet another row back to the club for more beer...

little cracks become big cracks...

But eventually I came to the end of the scraping and painting, and if she didn't look as good as new, she sure looked good enough.

side decks painted

The Kirby paint has a nice, rich look to it (compare it to the Brightside on the top of the deckhouse), and Kirby sent me a bag of ground pumice to use for an anti-skid additive. Hard to get more primitive -- I mean traditional -- than that!

I used Brightside again on the more stable topsides because I still had a can left, and by the end of the summer, the good old Blue Moon looked pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.

Why do I never have a good picture, when I need it?

I even found time to give her bottom a couple coats of paint. 

Well, heck, she deserved it...

A lot easier job than the last time!

Today is the day before Thanksgiving. The Blue Moon is still swinging on her mooring in the middle of Huntington Harbor. I'm hoping to get a few more sails in before putting her to bed for the winter. With any luck, in fact, Helena and I will be out tomorrow for a celebratory sail.

What are we celebrating? 

Exactly one year ago tomorrow, my birthday, I sailed into Huntington Harbor, home from my long voyage up the coast. 

Somehow, it seems so long ago... almost part of the mythic, if not very heroic, past...

Where does the time go, Prometheus? Oh... still chained to that rock, eh?

I've got another big summer project to report on... one that really helped me get 'up' in the world. More on that in a couple days. Meanwhile, Happy Thanksgiving!

>>> Next Episode: Getting Up In The World

Tail Block Takes Shape

Dang! I don't mind making mistakes once, but after I've learned a lesson -- and even blogged about learning it -- it's quite annoying to make it again.

You will note that I very carefully marked the center of the sheave axle on my design. You can't see it in the the photo below, but I had also marked the location of the axle on one of the cheeks. But, while playing with the pieces, and noticing that I could make the block a good 1/4" smaller by pushing the spacers closer together, I moved the location of the sheave just a bit. So my carefully preserved mark was no longer useful. 

Even worse, by moving the spacers together, the sheave needed to be placed just so. There wasn't enough room left inside the block for any error. 

I said last time that I noticed this error right away, but now that I'm looking at the photos below, I can see that I gave myself too much credit. Clearly I was far too focused on carving my beautiful new block into shape to notice that I'd forgotten to drill the hole for the axle. Ignorance is bliss, so I will carry on  in the same spirit for a bit longer...

After giving the epoxy a good 24 hours to dry, I trimmed up the new block on my trusty (and rusty) bandsaw. I was immensely pleased to compare it with my Mark I block. Clearly, progress had been made.

Rough trimming on Bandsaw

The only shaping I planned to do was to round the corners off, all around. This block would live under my boom, so I didn't want any sharp corners that could dent my skull. Again, there might be a better way to do this, but my new sanding board made quick and easy work of the job.

There must be a more scientific way to do this, right???

In the process of doing all this sanding, with many different grades of sand paper, I ended up with a pile of full sheets, half-sheets, and slightly used sheets of sand paper. Sorting through the pile to find the right size and grade needed quickly got old, but suddenly all those years of working in an office came in handy.

I found an old accordion file, made up a few labels with '60', 80', '100'... all the way up to ''400', and, voila, created a very convenient sandpaper file system. You have no idea how happy this little 'invention' made me. Quite embarrassing.

A brilliant idea, if I do say so myself!

Right around that happy moment, I must have discovered my missing axle hole. It is not recorded what I said, but I'm pretty sure it was something salty.

At any rate, there was nothing for it but to eyeball the location, and try my luck with my drill press. I must have been due a bit of luck, because, as you can see from the photo below, I was dead on.

Final check for fit before assembly

Then it was time for the fun bit -- finishing. I had been using the procedure much loved on the Wooden Boat Forum, which is to plunge the block into a linseed oil bath and leave it there for a few days. But I'd been reading an excellent basic woodworking book, Anthony Guidice's The Seven Essentials of Woodworking, which recommended a different procedure that made a lot of sense to me.

In short, you essentially paint the piece with three coats of linseed oil. For the first coat, you thin the linseed oil with mineral spirits. The second and third coats are applied full strength. Let dry for 24 hours between coats.

Since I hadn't seen any evidence that linseed oil 'penetrates' the wood if left in a bath for several days, I reasoned that the oil bath was equivalent to one coat. Three coats sounded better, so I figured it was worth a try. I'll try to remember to blog about the results in the fall.

At any rate, there is nothing more fun that applying that first coat of linseed oil, and seeing the color spring out. I also love the smell of linseed oil. Odd, I know!

The first of 3 coats of linseed oil... what a color!

After three days, it was time to turn to rope work. I wanted this block for a kind of tail block, under my boom. It would be an important part of my outhaul/reefing tackle, as illustrated in Tom Cunliffe's book.

For the block end, I just spliced in an eye and secured the block in the eye with tarred nylon. Easy peasy.

For the hook end, I had to learn a new splice -- the shackle splice -- but the only tricky bit was the crown knot that starts the splice off. I used the description in Brian Toss's The Complete Rigger's Apprentice: Tools and Techniques for Modern and Traditional Rigging, page 82.

The result looked pretty rugged to me. The little tufts are just the ends of the splice. I now prefer to leave the ends just cut off, rather than melting them, as some people do. I don't like the feel of the hard little ends, and don't see how they make a splice any stronger.

Assembled block with tail.

Here's a close-up shot of the block. Notice how the sheave is recessed into the bottom spacer. The opening is plenty big enough for 3/8" line, and would handle 1/2" line in a pinch.

These are, by far, the best glue joints I've ever made, and the sheave fits perfectly into the slot. Practice makes perfect?

Finally, some joinery I can be proud of.
 Perfect glue joints, perfect fit.

A final comparison with the Mark I block... No comparison!

Size comparison -- a big improvement!

And here's the tackle installed under the Blue Moon's boom. The Blue Moon's main is small enough so I only need a 2:1 tackle, instead of the 3:1 shown in Tom's book.

With 2 oak cheek blocks on either side of the boom for the reefing tackle, and the new outhaul tackle, all run with 3/8" line, I now have total confidence in my sail controls. Unfortunately, it's August on Long Island Sound, and the wind is on summer vacation. I went out in the biggest wind we've had for awhile, but it was only 20 knots... not much of a test. Will have to wait for October or November to do a real test. Stay tuned...

Installed on the boom as part of the outhaul tackle.
I must remember to untie my reef points after lowering sail... I always forget.

If you remember the oak boom cleat I made a while back, here it is, an important part of the system.

Tied off to oak boom cleat...
Strong!

And that's it! My next project on the Blue Moon is to repaint the deck. Painting isn't very exciting, but you never know when you're going to learn something new...

>>> Next Episode: Painting Stem-to-Stern

Micro Joinery

I started off yesterday by lamenting my lack of woodworking knowledge. This is no joke. I have done just enough woodworking to realize how little I know, and how difficult it will be to accumulate the kind of experience that 'real' woodworkers have.

For instance, in building my first few blocks (including more than a few that ended up on the scrap pile), I discovered how difficult it is to keep a flat surface flat while sanding or planing it. No matter how careful I was, I invariably ended up with a rounded surface (high in the middle with low spots on the edges) or a slanting surface (higher on one end than the other), or some even more complexly distorted surface. Anything but flat!

This makes it all but impossible to make good glue joints, which demand two flat surfaces, face to face. 

I had been using thickened epoxy to fill the rolling gaps between the spacers and cheeks, but that kind of slap-dash approach didn't seem right to me this time... Surely it wasn't impossible to get two small bits of wood to match up perfectly. I was determined to discover this woodworking secret.

However, the first challenge was to extract two rough cheeks, and two rough spacers -- with the right grain dictions -- from the slab of white oak on my work bench. This wasn't too difficult. The slab was 10/8" thick, so I thought I could cut three 3/8" thick cheeks from one piece, allowing some loss from sawing. 

I didn't take photos of this process, but here is the result: a roughly-square block, after the one 3/8" slice has been already been take off on the bandsaw. It only remains to re-saw this into two pieces that will become the cheeks.

A roughly square block

Even my less-than-professional quality bandsaw (that's putting a kind spin on it) is more than capable of doing the job quickly and neatly.

Re-sawn into two cheeks

I also cut out two spacers of the right size and grain orientation. Because I'd made my previous blocks from finished boards, the grain in the spacers always had to be up and down. This created an end-grain glue joint, which as even I know, is almost the worst kind of glue joint (the worst being end-grain to end-grain.)

From the photo below, it looks like these roughly cut pieces are already flat. They are in fact close, but being freshly sawn, they need to be sanded smooth before assembly. This is where my previous efforts had turned nearly-flat bits of wood into smoothly-humped bits of wood. Very frustrating.

Spacer cut for a long-grain to long-grain glue joint

To solve this problem, I build a kind of sanding platform out of a piece of marine plywood and a strip of oak. I varnished it to make it easy to stick tape to (and because I think varnishing is fun.)

My flat-sanding jig

My basic idea was to tape sandpaper to the platform, using double-sided scotch tape, and just rub the piece on the flat sand paper. The theory was it would be impossible to round off the edges using this simple technique, and in fact, it worked perfectly!

The key to flat sanding: move piece, not sand paper!

The purpose of the oak strip was to make it easy to sand small pieces, like the spacers, while keeping the faces 90 degrees to each other. This was another problem I'd had... when sanding with a sanding block, it is all to easy to end up with slanting faces. 

By holding the piece against the rail and rubbing the piece up and down the rail, I was able to sand the piece while keeping the edges square to each other. 

Keeping small pieces square

Finally, it's important that the two spacers be the same height, for obvious reasons. I'd already ruined several spacers by sanding a bit off this one, then a bit off the other, trying to make them the same size, but ending up with two toothpicks.

By holding the two spacers pressed together, it was easy to sand them both at the same time, thus guaranteeing two spacers of the same height.

Two spacers exactly the same size! Wow!

I'm sure real woodworkers have a more efficient way of doing this, but this approach didn't require the purchase of any new equipment (I'm determined to make these blocks for as nearly free as possible) or sophisticated techniques.  With some double-sided tape and various grades of big-box sand paper, I ended up with smooth, square, and flat cheeks and spacers.

Whew!

Here's how the bits look when laid together for fit. I discovered I could actually make the block a bit smaller than I had planned, so the cheeks are a little long.

I cut the recess in the bottom spacer and the rope-groove in the top spacer using my micro-plane rasps, as shown in a previous blog post.

How the pieces fit together

By this time, I had a lot of work invested in those small pieces, so I was strangely reluctant to glue them together, less I make some fatal mistake. But after much dithering, I gathered my courage and took the final step.

The moment of truth...

And here is the assembly, glued up. It's really difficult to put clamps on such a small assembly without moving something out of line, so rather than use clamps, I just put a 5 lb. pig of lead on top of the whole thing (with saran wrap in-between). This gives moderate clamping pressure, without the risk of ruining the assembly at the last moment.

At least, that was the theory. Only time would tell. But as I was gazing admiringly at this tiny bit of woodwork, I realized I'd made one potentially serious mistake...

>>> Next Episode: Tail Block Takes Shape