Using a circular saw, I cut on one face of the timber to the mast's outlines which I drew yesterday. The saw blade wouldn't cut all the way through the 3 3/4" thickness, so I flipped it over and cut to the outlines on the opposite face. The cuts matched up fairly well, but I had left 1/16 margin for trim anyway. With the electric hand plane I carefully planed the trimmed faces until they were right to the line and square with the side faces. When I was satisfied with that I flipped it over and planed the opposite cut face the same way. That left the timber with the correct taper in one dimension. I drew the outline on the two newly planed tapered surfaces, cut and planed them the same way. At the end of the day I had a 4-sided mast blank with the right dimensions and the right taper. Doesn't sound like much for a day's work, but I took my time to avoid ruining a piece of wood which was hard to find, expensive and slow to dry to a stable moisture content. The weather was what you would expect it to be in the middle of August in Florida so I ended up tired, sweaty, and covered with enough planer chips and sawdust to resemble like a chainsaw sculpture. Thank God for air conditioning and Cuba Libres.
Next step will be to gradulally turn the 4-sided mast blank into a round, tapered solid mast.
In yesterday's post I told what I'd learned about the history of wooden lumber schooners used on the St. Lawrence. Here are a few related pictures:
This is just like the boat I saw in 1970 with a load of pulpwod being put aboard by hand. The crew worked in pairs. One man on the quay would lift a log with one hand underneath and the other hand holding a hook with a transverse wooden handle. He'd hook the end of the log and throw it down to the deck where his mate would hook the leading end of the log on the fly, and catch the log underneath with his other hand. The man on the quay would throw the log as high as he could, to make it hard for the man on the deck to catch it. After they had the "schooner" fully loaded it was pinned to the bottom, so they had to reverse the process and unload about half the logs. A young man and woman standing beside me on the quay started laughing at them. I moved far enough away to show that I was not with them.
This is the same type of boat, now at a maritime museum at St. Joseph de la Rive, east of Quebec City. It was one of the last boats of its type in operation, retiring in 1972. No epoxy was used in its construction. It doesn't look like a flat bottomed boat, but what looks like the keel is a heavy external chine. The actual bottom timbers are about the thickness of railroad ties. 
On the right is the hulk of an older schooner. I couldn't learn much about it from the people at the museum; either they didn't know or couldn't overcome my lack of French. It is round bottomed, but you can see that the keel is not deep. It looks like a sailing hull, but would have needed a centerboard; not an unusual thing for coasting schooners.
Finally, this interesting boat represents the last days of sail for the lumber-hauling vessels. The schooner rig has been modified by shortening the mainmast and moving it aft, so the "schooner" was actually a ketch. That leaves more room on deck for the lumber. How do you suppose the helmsman saw where he was going? The photo wasn't dated. I'd guess it was from around 1920.
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