Ahoy All, Has anyone replaced their BCC bowsprit with Sitka Spruce or similar wood lately ?
I am having difficulty to find a suitable wood , here in Singapore . My attempts to purchase Sitka Spruce from Port Towsend, have failed from lack of interest from suppliers there.
Does anyone know about Port Orford Cedar ?
I really don’t want to use Douglas Fir again .
Trying to find a supplier of New Zealand Kauri Pine, has also failed .
Any ideas might really help , Douglas
We don’t recommend using either the Port Orford Cedar or the Sitka Spruce as both lack the rot resistance of Clear Fur.
Our fur bowsprit, cerca 1990, now 15 years old had delaminations as early as 2000 extending to a depth of 1" into all the seams. Varnish covered the seam crack so well, we didn’t notice the void until I stripped the bowsprit last year to re-varnish it.
The superficial join failure was due to lack of proper maintenance and use of resorcinol glue, resorcinol glues have been around for as long as I can remember, probably as long as boats have been plying waters around the world; resorcinol is temperature, moisture and clamping pressure sensitive in its application, one wrong move in its application and the joint will come apart like a cheap suit. Like epoxy, resorcinol glue does not like exposure to the elements.
Some builder still use resorcinol glues, unstandably due to the health risks associated with epoxy, but clearly epoxy is a superior adhesive. When working with epoxy, we recommend using a respirator and wear good quality gloves, this will help ward off long-term exposure and sensativity to epoxy which is acumulative, so much so, than some people can not touch cured epoxy without encuring an alergic reaction.
We sawed out the seams to find the delamination only penetrated to a depth of 1" and there was no wood rot present, we epoxy saturated the cut, then splined the cut with clear fur bedded in West Systems epoxy. We sanded an fared the entire bowsprit and bathed it all in West Systems epoxy and sprayed it with white Interlux LPU paint, a year of sailing later it looks beautiful.
Marty Chin, BCC Shamrock
BCC Forums bccforums@samlmorse.com wrote:
Author: Douglas
Username: Douglas
Subject: Bowsprit Wood
Forum: BCC Forum
Link: http://www.samlmorse.com/forum/read.php?5,4262,4262#msg-4262
Ahoy All, Has anyone replaced their BCC bowsprit with Sitka Spruce or similar wood lately ?
I am having difficulty to find a suitable wood , here in Singapore . My attempts to purchase Sitka Spruce from Port Towsend, have failed from lack of interest from suppliers there.
Does anyone know about Port Orford Cedar ?
I really don’t want to use Douglas Fir again .
Trying to find a supplier of New Zealand Kauri Pine, has also failed .
Any ideas might really help , Douglas
We built our original bowsprit of clear douglas fir and had no trouble with it for 18 years when it was distroyed in hurricane Georges while slipped in Puerto Rico.
I couldn’t find good fir immediately but did find some western red cedar and laminated up three pieces of stock 2 x 6’s and it has served well with no problems since then('98).
As for glueing, our original fir was resorcinoled and the cedar epoxied. I would put both glues as equal except that resorcinol requires an almost perfect fit whereas epoxy doesn’t. Also resorcinol seems better on teak. And of course epoxy is easier to find world wide.
I would use any woods used by local boatbuilders and saturate it with thinned epoxy after glueing up. You might try contacting a local yacht club for tips or even try:
Raffles Yacht - Singapore Head Office
No.1 Claymore Drive
#08-04 Orchard Towers
Singapore 229594
Tel : +65-6735 8690
Fax : +65-6734 5449
Not to have them make you a sprit but to get the raw material. If you are lucky enouigh to find a sailor there you may be surprised at the offer to help with a ‘problem’.