I had a long discussion the other day with a good friend of mine on the making of wooden spars. Specifically my friend Pete wanted to know the best way to turn a square lump of wood into a svelte mast. I explained to him that the practice is not all that complicated and that the most difficult part is accurately marking out the wood to give you something to work to. When I started to talk about a spar gauge I could start to see his eyes start to glaze over.
A spar gauge is based on pythagerous' theorem and is basically a piece of wood into which two pins are placed which rub on the outside of the square stock and inside of this are a couple of pencils. What is important is the spacing of the outside pins and pencil tips which are in the ratio of 7-10-7. In other words the measurement between the center of the outside pin and the point of the pencil is 7, (such as 7o mm) the measurement between the pencil points is 10 ( so assuming the first measurement is 70 mm then this will be 100mm) and finally the measure from other pencil point to center of other pin will be 70mm again. Of course you can use any measurement you like providing the ratio is correct and this will depend on the diameter of the spar that you are making with a larger spar requiring a bigger gauge obviously. What is important to note is that guage can be canted as it is run along the spar and this is shown in the illustration below which incidentally I found on the internet and is drawn much better than I could have done . I would have credited the author but I found it on several different sites so I am unsure as to the original author.
Incidentally I found a very basic step by step of the process of spar making on the Collars website which gives a great overall idea of how to go about the process.
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