Since today is shopping day I did not expect to get any tasks done on Naiad today but I ended up doing one anyway. Once the spars have been turned in to hexadecagons in section they need to be made round and there are at least two ways of doing this. The first is to use a plane, powered or manual, and given my cack handed use of either this is not my preferred method. The second is to use copious quantities of sandpaper but this is not my preferred method either. I was reading a forum entry with the natty title of 'Building the D18 Myst - 18' Beach Yawl' on the Wooden Boat Forum when I found a third method. On pages 12-14 you can see some photos of the construction of several spars and the mast including this photo:

Here the mast has been mounted on a very long wood lathe and you can see that the boat builder has used a long plank to extend the bed of the lather sufficiently to take the length of the mast. He has also made this:

It is a three-wheeled support for the far end of the spar being turned on the lathe. the story of the build from start to finish makes for very interesting reading and Kent Tyson, the boat builder, is an exceptional carpenter and produced a very fine boat.

I believe that he found the extended lathe method on another forum but suffice it to say that this is my preferred method of shaping the spars. I just needed a long plank. Well, finding a single plank long enough for the 15' 6" mast turned out to be difficult, but 13' scaffold planks were readily available and I found a place outside King's Lynn that sold them new for a very good price. So at lunchtime, having received confirmation that he planks were ready for collection, I drove to the depot with the horse trailer and fetched the four planks home.

I won't be able to set them up until the boat is taken out of the workshop, so the emphasis of the coming weekend will be to put in the remaining hardware, take the boat outside and make a cockpit cover to keep the rain out. Then I can start the spar shaping in earnest.