Finish

Just one coat of linseed oil brought out the rutilations, a term referring to the shimmery striations running across the grain at right angles, barely visible in this photo, in this old Douglas Fir like on a star sapphire, only these don't converge in a star effect, they are parallel. The cedar filler pegs look like the moons of Saturn in the rings of unsolidified interstellar gases...

I did find a place to hang my newly oiled  mast out of the way, against the wall behind my worktable, a kind of a tableux shrine of all the best-loved things remaining in my world. That's my kid on the wall, goofy in his Junior year at Marshfield High. The little doily contains symbolic gilded relics of my trip to Thailand, a shrine to an old guru, a beech-nut from Mark Twain's yard and a sponge from the beach at Key West. There is an  Orthodox crucifix  (Ethiopian, not Russian)  of Ebony set with precious stones that I made many years ago during my Rastafarian period, and a marble relief carving symbolizing illumination from even earlier than that, when Jeff was a baby.
Off to the right is my voodoo doll by the medicine chest I made  in a creative frenzy over a couple of rainy days on Felicity Jane two  winters ago.
I'll do another couple of coats of the boiled Linseed oil, it has a very agreeable odor and a very forgiving nature for its application. It tolerates an unsteady brush and a bump or two without complaint.