Sanded spars are not photogenic.
All the old layers of varnish are gone and the masts are somewhat
thinner for it, they may well rattle in the decks. Any weight I may
have removed has been added to the boom, to which I've scarfed an 8cm
extension. It was always a short boom, thin too, and made from a
scuzzy length of baton that once belonged to a stage set. I've glued
clean trim to the bottom and sides and set a sheave into the clew end
to redirect the reefing lines and make shortening sail quicker.
But the work has been hampered by
the usual problems of having an invisible workshop and exacerbated by
the state of my tools. I've spent a lot of time traveling back to
square one—rediscovering what constitutes a functioning arrangement
in which to manufacture and repair items of wood and metal. Working
in poor conditions—the bench wobbling wildly with every stroke of a
dull plane, tools, pencils, rulers, shaken to the ground, loose
screws becoming lost in the grass until, barefoot in the summer, I
find them with my heel—I can only hope to produce shoddy work.
I started by making a solid
working surface. Solid but not flat. The piece, laminated from MDF
and chipboard, warped as the glue dried in the sunshine. I followed
up by going over the rotting pair of trestles with a set square and
then refastening them with glue and dowels. Where ever I set up this
surprisingly heavy contraption one or two trestle legs fail to rest
on the ground but this is resolved with a pair of wedges.
Nowadays the attitude in The
Invisible Workshop has shifted away from results to focus on process,
the satisfaction being in the accurate stroke of a properly
functioning plane.
On this little journey I've
learned to get the most out of a worn, parted whetstone and have
restored my chisels and plane as well as an old screwdriver my
grandfather once lent me to adjust the air/fuel mixture on my Morris
Minor van. In the way of many that borrow tools I failed to return it
and through some whimsy of happenstance it has stayed with me. Though
paint-stained and much pitted with rust, the handle split and
scuffed, the shaft loose in it's socket it was evidently an object
that deserved restoration—for the memory of my grandfather, my
unreliable Morris van and the 30 intervening years. I removed the
rust with wet and dry sandpaper, reshaped the handle with a file and
sanded with progressively finer grits until the wood was smooth as
skin. Then I left it to soak in teak oil for a few days, and
reassembled with wood glue.
I soon put it to use extracting
some brass screws from a rebate plane that I bought from a junk shop
for 8 euros. It was then that I discovered that the antique dealer
had ripped me off.
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| Chisels, knives, screwdriver, restored blocks, parted whetstone and Morris van. |
