Since I am working on a gaff rigged 1 mast clipper

we decided to refurbish our gaff. A gaff is that part of the hoisting mechanism where a sail is attached to and then hoised. This gaff is a big too big for the main sail we use right now but none the less, it was really time to refurbish is. The main problem was that there was some rotten pieces on the front and back and this needed to be fixed. While on that we decided to strip all the paint and make it a propper "new" gaff.

Step 1 - Let's start

We dis-attached the gaff from the boat and brought it to a friend who is also a carpenter. As you can see in the photo, the wood on the very front was not in the best shape anymore. We removed that iron cage (Iam sure it got its own name but I dont know it - If you know, please let me know)

Step 2 - Gluing time

We removed all the rotten wood, let it dry thoroughly and placed a layer of wood glue mixed with sawdust made out of hardwood

Step 3 - more gluing

We did the very same thing in the back of the gaff. Throughout the years a whole was created that stared rotting. So we removed the bad wood and replaced it with sawdust made out of hardwood.

Step 4 - Black wood?

There where quite some pieces that turned black with the years. Rob (the carpenter) suggested that we can use a chemical to remove these black pieces. So we did and the wood turned back to a nice light woody color.

Step 5 - The Stripping

I decided to strip the gaff completly. I admit, I am not the biggest fan of doing something just half assed, so after one hour of grinding and scratching the gaff was free from 15 years of old layers of paint.

Step 6 - Ready for painting

In every good carpentry there is a painting area with heaters and so we move the gaff to one of those. Of cause we tapped all the metal parts with tape in order to have less work afterwards. In other words, no paint that is ment for wood on metal parts. They needed to painted black later anyways.
So this is how the gaff looked with the 1st coating of "Mahoni"

Step 7 - Adding primer / base coating

Rob was as nice and added some base coat to all the metal parts while I was not there. He did that in order to create more surrface area so that the black coating would stick better.

Step 8 - In the meantime

Of cause we do have a lot of blocks that needed to be painted too, so I did that in the mean time as well :)

Step 9. - 2 more layers and we are good to go

In the following days I added 2 more coatings to the gaff and painted all metal parts black

Step 10. - Time to go sailing

Of cause we did not sail strait out of the harbor, but we brought back the gaff and added the main sail to it and gave it a try. We where quite happy about the out come.

I assume this took around 14 days to finish this project. The most complicated thing is really the drying process. We did this in the spring, so it was cold and every thing need ages to fully dry through.

Fair winds!

Do you want to know more details about the ship I was working on? Leave me a comment :-*