OREGON SPAR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 179, 30 July 1936, Page 9

OREGON SPAR.

i . i i FOR SCHOONER HUIA. i J SEARCH FOR NEW MAST. ! DEARTH OF KAURI TIMBER. Time was —and that within the past 100 years—when ships of all nations 1 came to New Zealand for kauri spars. They were the first product of this I country to be exported, long before I British sovereignty was proclaimed here.! j and for many years thereafter they i were the most valuable article of our j j trade. Although it grew no further j I south than what is now the Auckland j ' ; Province, the supply seemed to be inexi liaustible. Round the Waitemata Har- • hour the kauri forests came in some places rijrht down to the water's edge and a-s late as 1563, when the ship i Bombay, from London, arrived atAuckI land dismasted (as was told on this I I page yesterday), a kauri tree for the | ! making of her mainmast, upwards of j I POft long, was felled in Fernlcigli Street, | j Ponsonby. j But so drastic lias been the clearance i of the kauri forests in the intervening 170 years (hat to-day spars for locally j I built ships have to* be imported fron: j I America. Mr. Ernest Davis' yacht | Morewa lias masts of Oregon pine, and in a few weeks the well-known old top-1 Fail schooner Huia will have a foremast i of the same timber, replacing the kauri | one which has done service for some 20 | years. j ' ' When the keel of the Huia was laid jat Aratapu. on the shores of the Kai-j ! para Harbour, in 1K94. her builder, th,- j ilate Mr. James Barber, could take his I pick of the kauri out of hundreds of j i acres of bush, and did so. cruisinsr the I bush himself and marking selected I trees for subsequent felling: but when j the present owners of the vessel. Xobel j (Australasia) Proprietary, Limited, j ordered from Messrs. W. G. Lowe and j Sons a new foremast. 76ft lonp, Mr. T. Lowe travelled over 20f>0 miles by motor I car through the Auckland Province. | seeking a kauri spar of suitable diraenj sions, and could not obtain one.

Tree 'Upside Down. There are, of course, plenty of kauris, not much bigger than rikas, clean-boled and gracefully tapering, that to a landsman look ideal for the purpose. "All you have to do," he would say, "is to trim off the bark, lop off the top, square the butt, and tliere you have it." Actually, however, it takes a fairly big- tree to * provide such a spar, as the Huia wants, 70ft long and 22in in diameter, for, when it is stepped as a mast, a tree is placed upside down. Standing on its head, as it were, it is stronger and more durable, than if it stood the same way up as it grew. Unable to obtain the kauri spar which the owners would have preferred, the shipbuilders imported, at a cost of £90, ! a balk of Oregon pine, weighing 4 tons I l.'icwt, which is now being shaped for a I mast. As the Huia's foremast has to earrv. In addition to the ordinary fore- ; sail.' staysail and jibs, the weight of i three yards with their square sails, it has to* be flawless and of uncommon strength for a vessel of her size, although, when it is set up, its graceful taper will make it look 110 bigger than a switch in comparison with the cloud of canvas that will be set on it. | The trimming of the mast i> a lonp J process, still carried out by hand in | exactly the same way and with exactly | the same tools, axe, saw. drawknife and | plane, as it was centuries ago. It is | one of the few jobs on which the shipI wright may not use his favourite tool. I and the one with which he is. despite its awkward appearance, so amazingly expert—the adze. Instead, he uses for j the "roughing out" of the spar a broad I axe, more like a weapon than a tool. I with a cutting edge over a foot across, I a curved blade and a. curved haft, the ! whole being, if anything, more awkward | than an adze in the hands of an amaI teur. With this bizarre-looking tool | however, a shipwright can trim a spat | down to within a hairbreadth almost ol I the required size. | Tapers in Graceful Curves. I Ten feet or so of the base of the mast where it will be below deck, is squared . Above that, the mast is for a short distance still square, but of larget . diameter, and then tapers down in grac«> fnl curves from each corner to cvlindri . eal shape. This has been reduced frorr the square to the round by a proces? of trimming off corners. First tlu

square balk was made octagonal, by trimming off each of its four corners; then cacli of the eijrht corners so forrfled was trimmed off, and so on. the perfect cylinder of the required diameter being finally obtained by scraping it down with drawknives. For tlie fitting of the crosstrces. the top of the mast is octagonal, tapering away to about half the diameter of the base.

Now on her w,r« from Dunedin to Westport, the Huia is to load at the latter port and nt fireymouth for Mel- \ bourne. Thence she is to come to Auckland, being due here early in November, when her outworn kauri foremast will be lifted out and the new "foreign" one stepped.