Round and Round

Turns out I didn't need as much 80 grit sandpaper as I thought.
Wandering around inner Southeast Portland in the rain the other day I stopped in at the Miller Paint store and confirmed what I already suspected, they are the paint bullshitters of Portland, with upscale creepy exhomeimprovement management assholes behind the counter, and homeowner material on sale, unlike the old days when they were the real deal. Not any more. I wanted 80 grit paper, they had it only in packs of 100 sheets. They did have those half-assed variety packs and they included 60 grit only, and a woodworker can't use it. Homeowners do, but its a false economy. Sure you get the old shit off off there fast, but you pay for that with deep scratches from the big grit and it takes you far longer to get the scratches out than it would have...They don't sell metal workpots anymore, and the chick tried to tell me they don't make an oil-based enamel primer.. I now officially hate those bastards, even though the primer, Pure Paint, that they actually do still make is the best in the business.
The little Ace Hardware (chain-2 strikes already) that used to be in Uptown and is now down in the hardware ghetto by Chowns down by the freeway, amazingly had paper by the sheet, so I got 5 sheets 80, 2 sheets 120 and a 180.
The little mast is done, even the sheave in the masthead came out nice, all the holes and the marking of same done a bit on the voodoo side since nothing is parallel anymore, but they lined right up and it looks just like the big boys.

With a rat-tail rasp it was easy to file a groove around a  chunk of seasoned Cherry branch I had on stash for carving spoons. Slabbed that off like makeing a cookie from frozen cookie dough, drilled a hole in the middle, and that made the sheave. The axle is a chunk of #4 copper wire thrust through a gob of tallow and peened over a pair of washers to make a  very functional improvised rivet.

When all that crazy handsaw workout was over, I made a little jig to mark the tapered slab, 4 sided, with paralell lines so that when you plane off the corners, voila, 8-sided and good to go.

My new Canon copier was just the right height to carry one end. I'm having a war with HP, but I'm too lazy to change them out, so I have the Canon nearby to intimidate my HP into acting right. So far so good.

The dips and wiggles from the handsaw made those guidelines  an approximation, but it did tend to agree with itself, so I took it down to the octagon with Bob's supersharp jack plane and its #4 pal. The big boys do it again down to 16 sided, but it was pretty rough, and my jury-rig marking jig was too general to get that specific so I took it the rest of the way by eye, which worked out ok.

I found this diagram after I had the thing done just to show you what its supposed to look like and yes to brag a bit about the halfassed thing I made and used

1979 Wooden Boat Symposium I heard a lecture by Harold "Dynamite" Payson who described this sparmaker's jig among other extremely usefull doodads for the shop. I used them all, but I waited 33 years to make this one. It did the job I did look around on the web to refresh my memory, but I didn't find much until it was already over. Dynamite Payson is one of the Greybeards of traditional boatbuilding and an accessible and truly nice guy.

 I did have to watch myself, I was having so much fun with those sharp-ass planes I could easily have gone too far in a very short time.
But I did the last tiny soft shavings with an even smaller one-handed affair, a little block plane given me by my pal Nan Kitchens whan I was in Key Largo last year, and I managed to get it sharp as the others and it did the trick.
I dragged the stick out to the backyard to the smokers' pavillion officially known as the Barbecue Shelter (no barbecue allowed, another strange tale) and I spent an agreeable if slightly chilly and damp afternoon and only one sheet of 80s and by god the thing was round, tapered, and looking like it had always been that way.
Yesterday I rigged up a dust collector which was really only the hoover hose hung from a string pointed right at the work at my knee to keep the dust from the 120s under control as I made all smooth.
I was like a little kid, I couldn't stop look at it and petting it like you do the baby's forehead wondering how something could be so soft and smooth.