Taffrail

Calliope recently got a new taffrail which I made out of teak I bought at Exotic Lumber. I made the rail from one piece of teak by sawing out the curve from a template that I made from the old rail. And the cool part was that I took the ears from the waste that I cut out of the central curve. This was nice because it allowed me to save pretty big on the lumber. It was still expensive, but not insane. The lumber was about $100 including milling. I joined the two ears to the main piece using epoxy thickened with wood flour to a mayonnaise like consistency, and I used biscuits with a biscuit joiner for alignment.

Unfortunately I didn't take any pix of the rail-making process or of the rail before I put it on the boat. So this is all I got. I re-used the previous blocks and attached them to the boat with 1/4" x 3" flat head phillips machine screws , fender washers and locknuts. I had previously drilled and filled the old holes with thickened epoxy to seal them up. After attaching the blocks, I attached the rail to the boat with more of the same through-bolts. I did not counterbore and plug the holes. I'm not sure if I will do this...maybe.

The spinnaker lead attachments are also attached with 1/4" through bolts except for the most outboard hole which has a wood screw. I still have to attach the chocks but I didn't receive them in time to do that for now. So I will do it in a few weeks when I'm back from my trip.




HUGE thanks to Bruce for helping me wrestle this thing into place and tighten down the bolts. Also MEGA thanks to Dorian for coming through with some fresh drill bits at the 11th hour when I had broken or dropped all mine in the water...