Masts: Continued......

To All,

I need to get moving and hopefully have most of what I need done for the High Seas game done by Sunday night. Last night I made progress on the construction of the masts.

I went and got some dowels. Not all of them are for mast construction - the larger ones are going to be used for range sticks.

 These are the tools for the mast construction. Loctite Power Grab, the "Easy Cutter" by Midwest Products, and my little metal ruler. You can see on the table I have most of the masts constructed. The only thing I had to do was to add the part sticking out towards the back of the ship. (not very nautical)

The Easy Cutter is a great tool. The face of it has different angles right on it. Just line up the dowels and get pretty accurate angled cuts.

I had a hard time getting the flat-angled cut to stick to the round dowels so I had to put a in notch the mast in order to make them stick.

 Three lines cut into the dowel....

 ....the notch....

 ..perfect fit....

 ..filling it in with Loctite.

Loctite is a really great adhesive. Out of the tube it has the consistency of caulking - you can fill in spaces with it and smooth it out with a wet finger or paper towel. The nice thing about Loctite is that it begins to "set-up" within a couple of minutes, holding together the two things you are wanting to join rather quickly. I usually let it cure over night before I put any paint or primer on it. Once cured the hold is really strong.
These are the simple masts - I'm going to show you a different/fancy way to do it toward the end of the week but I am feeling the pressure to get this done so this is what I have.