Charles Worden wrote:The two inch should be 9/4

I don't believe that lumber mills offer 9/4 wood.  I believe that they only offer thick rough wood in 8/4 - 12/4 - and 16/4.

8/4 is 2" in the rough and 1-3/4" finished. 

12/4 is 3" in the rough, and 2-3/4" finished.

New Bowsprit replacement saga continues...

Since I was unable to locate any sort of decent, aged/kiln dried clear wood locally I finally found a source (Middletown Lumber in PA) of quality vertical grain kiln dried Douglas Fir.

I wasn't too concerned about the cost of getting it shipped to me as I ran a few 'dummy' online quotes and got shipping costs between $250-300 from PA to Miami.  Not cheap but understandable and what else can I do?

The wood (laminated 5" X 4" X 10') was $300 ($220 for the wood and $80 for lamination). After it was laminated the lumberyard told me my total cost including shipping to Miami was $1010.22!  So now what I thought would be around $5-600'ish was now over a grand for a simple wood beam (I still have to shape, drill, etc.) and that's still not including the shipping cost from Miami to Guatemala.

Ouch! I asked why over $700 for shipping and they replied 'Shipping was $450, the rest is for all the material & labor to crate it up'. Crate it up? Thanks but I asked why couldn't they just wrap it in a couple layers of bubble wrap & cover it in some cardboard.  It's just a chunk of wood.

Anyway, He got back to me saying they got my cost down to $779 delivered to Miami.  Still pretty steep for a chunk of wood but what am I gonna do? They were the only lumberyard I could find willing to undertake this 'project' for me.

Anyway, I paid the bill and just got a follow-up email from the lumberyard saying the final bill from the shipper was $765!.  He didn't charge me the extra but dayum... that much to ship a 90 pound 10 foot piece of wood from PA to Miami?  Sheesh... what's going on up there?

I have to give them kudos because they pretty much ate their cost for the wood and labor etc. to honor their original quote.

The good news is it's only going to cost me about $75 to get it from Miami to my door here in Guatemala.

Moral of the story? Do NOT leave your hank-on jib in its bag on the pulpit/bowsprit during rainy season.  I thought I'd learned that lesson already having to replace my tiller due to dry rot because I had lashed it to my tiller pilot support with a rag 'cushion' between the tiller & the support.  But NOOoooo...

Next step (once it finally arrives here) is to taper it from 5" X 4" to 4" X 4" via power plane.  Then comes the not so fun part of disassembling the one in place to serve as the 'template' for drilling holes, etc. in the new one. 

If anyone has any bowsprit replacement tips they would like to share I'm all ears.

So this is what looks like 2" wide oak inlaid into the top (and I presume bottom) surfaces of the bowsprit?

Interesting mod.  I can see how that might really be beneficial for the staysail stay & staysail boom whatchamacallit.

Bud Taplin wrote:

Bob Meade wrote:Hi Bud,

 I just laminated a new bowsprit for Treasure ( W32 # 810) and am beginning to plane it into shape. I noticed that the old sprit had a 1/2 in.horizontal taper but the drawing I have from your manual has no taper annotated. Is the drawing for a stainless sprit or am I missing something? The wood (VG Douglas Fir) was spendy so I thought I would ask before I carved it up!

Thanks,

Bob 

The standard wooden bowsprit is 5" high at the butt, and 4" high at the forward end.  The stainless bowsprit I make uses a 4" square box tubing, so is not tapered.  I have the drawing of the wood bowsprit and can email it to you if you want.

Bud

My existing bowsprit is tapered but the drawing I have of the bowsprit does not show a taper either. 

I intend to taper my new bowsprit. My question is, is the taper on both sides or just one?

In other words, is there a 1/2" taper taken on both top and bottom of the 5" or a 1" taper taken off the bottom side only?