Has anyone ever replaced the woodwork - yes its an older NSM2 - around the bow part of the spinnaker shute. Mine has finally succumbed to wood rot and Im far from an expert carpenter. So any tips would be most welcome.

Steve C

I replaced the spinnaker chute on my NSM 2 (3285). I used a flat piece of mahogany (with a suitable hole cut out for the spinnaker) glued in place of the original wood. I then planed and sanded the wood to the desired shape. You can see photos of the process on the link below. The only thing to remember is that I was also replacing the gunwales which made the process a little simpler. Hope this helps.

Thanks for that ... I think I MAY be able to get away with just replacing the gunwales around the chute at this point .. is that fairly straight forward. Its getting the wood into shape Im really not confident about.

Steve

If you have the correct tools then it's a doddle and that's coming from me who is by no means a DIY expert. When I have shaped wood in the past to match an existing profile I use a spoke shave and various grades of sand paper. Similar to the images shown previosuly, epoxy your wood and clamp in situ. Once cured shave wood to match existing profile. Try and scarf old with new if possible as you achieve an almost seamless joint. Once you have done this similarly fit the stem cap and shape accordingly.  Job done!!

This join was done by a pro using the scarf joint method. Pretty neat!! But there is no reason why you could not do the same.

Richard is absolutely right. A spoke shave can be very useful in shaping curves on wood. You can get them with a flat base or a convex base but, as this is something few people have knocking around in their sheds, you need not feel that it is is any way essential for this job.The real trick is to use REALLY sharp, good quality planes and chisels taking off VERY little wood at a time. If you were intending to buy any tools for this job I would recommend a good quality smoothing plane, a good quality set of chisels and a sharpening stone (a block plane could also be useful but not essential). The benefit of high quality tools is that the steel takes a much better edge. Once you have worked with very sharp tools you will know that it is much easier to be accurate and you will never go back to poor tools again. You can shave off curls of wood that are so gossamer thin you can see through them. You are LESS likely to cut yourself if the tools are super sharp as you will not have to use any force to shave the wood and (as long as you look after them) they will last you the rest of your life. Most of my tools are well over 40 years old. If you take your time then, as Richard says, there is no reason why you can't produce fantastic results you can be proud of.You won't do them as quickly as the professionals but does that really matter?

Don't use a spokeshave on end grain though, you'll make a horrid mess.

Absolutely Mags, that's what the block plane is for (but a very sharp smoothing plane can be used carefully to the same effect). Another useful tool is a belt sander but you need to use it very sensitively!