The main task today was to look at the bolster and cheek pieces that will stop the loops of the rigging from sliding down the mast. Firstly, however, I put another coat of varnish on the sampson post, trimmed off some excess epoxy from the mast bands and trimmed the top of the mast.

I started the sawing by hand but found that I was sawing at an angle instead of straight so the top of the mast was done using the mitre saw. The result is in the photo above. The missing part of the circle was so thin that it was smaller than the width of the saw blade!

This breaks quite easily but not along the glue lines.

For the main task I started off by making a soft eye in a short length of rigging wire. The hardest part of this was getting the plastic tube over the wire. Eventually I successes by warming the tube in hot water and then making sure that instead of just pushing the plastic over the wire I screwed it over the wire making sure that I turned it in the same direction as the wire is twisted. This makes the wire just a little bit smaller in diameter. By contrast, turning the tube the other was would have made it impossible to get it over the wire.

The soft eye has to go over the top mast band and the two bolsters that will be put on the aft side of the mast for the forestay and the jib halyard but must be too small to go over the lower mast band!

I have to shape two pieces of wood to be glued and possible bolted to the mast that will stop the soft eyes, two each side, from sliding down the mast. As you can see this means the bolster must be curved to follow the plastic tube and also curved to follow the mast.

In the end I cut some mahogany and made two short sections of bird's mouth cylinders. When these are cured they will be cut in lengthways and four of these will be used to create the bolsters and cheeks.