Luigi Aldini

Before gluing up, it's really important to prepare all the scarf joints in the right way.

The first part of the work is finished: Lamination.

Now comes the second part, tapering the booms and gluing them together

This is what happens when you use a lot of glue! We covered the table with nylon paper to be sure to remove the spar from the jig.

The hell starts when you try to sand the dried glue from the lower side of the boom. The experience suggest to remove the glue when it is still wet, and to do so maybe it would be better raising the boom from the table with masked wood blocks. It’s funny how you learn to do the works when you’ve finished them.

This is the way we used the table. A lot of clamping , isn't it?

The upper boom is being glued while the lower one is finished.

It's not difficult work when you have a perfect table, and you work under 18° C if you're using Aerolite. Clamping time is very short, and you risk not to do a bad gluing.

The completion of the jig took 80 hours of working and checking time. (We checked everything three times). Preparation of the wood for the lamination was well made, controlling the grain, scarfing  the wood, drawing the dimensions both in the jig and in the future boom, and drawing also all the references for a fast gluing up.

After this kind of preparation, we found the actual gluing easier than the laminations for the frames. We glued one lamination per time, starting obviously with two layers in the lower spar boom since there is one joint between them.

With the watch in the hand and with four people we firstly took eight minutes to clamp everything using masked blocks between the wood and the head of the clamp to protect the spruce. Then with the experience of one weekend in two, we glued all the upper spar boom, and it took us about seven minutes per lamination. The system that proved to be better was to start from one side to clamp in position the side spruce layer, then  joining the scarf with the middle layer, clamp everything, and then the last one. In this way,with good references drawn down, your clamping time is very low, and the use of Aerolite is no longer a problem.

The finished spars.