Gaff progress

I made my first test birds mouth joint on Friday. Its a bit rough and uneven but I'm pretty happy with it. I was starting to worry the equipment might not work out but I've managed to adapt the router to a reliable fit to the table and solve a couple of other problems.

The router is clearly not meant to be used like this - it has no lock on the power button. I had to tape it in the on position. This works really well with the on/off switch on the table. Then I found the tool slipping downwards and panicked. But it turns out there is a locking position on the plunge control lever, so thats all right. Then I found a real bonus! The router has a vernier fine depth adjust on it. This is really easy to use when its in the table and it provides enough adjustment to set the height of the tool above the table perfectly. The joint in the table was made from a scrap of wood, grooved end to end and then cut into eight and glued with cascamite. I just used sellotape to bind it during drying. Not a plan for a full length spar, but it proved that the joint naturally takes its octagon shape.

We went and bought another 6 pine strips. I'm going to make a full scale model of the gaff in pine. Its cheap and I need practice. If it comes out really well, I might put it on the boat, but I expect I will want to make a second one in Douglas fir as Barry suggested at the AGM.

I realise I will need to plane or sand the inside edge of each strip to give it a good edge for glueing. The outside edge can be left as sawn - it will all come off in the rounding. The edge opposite the groove will have the taper on it and I want to do the taper first so the groove won't get damaged before gluing.