150-foot tree will become mast for ship at Aberdeen shop

ABERDEEN — Work is under way on the largest mast ever to be "turned" at the Grays Harbor Historical Seaport's spar shop in Aberdeen.

A 114-foot mast is needed for a two-masted ship called the Zodiac. Les Bolton, Seaport executive director, said a yearlong search was conducted to find a tree tall enough and straight enough to be converted into a full mast.

"A lot of the trees just don't make the grade," said Kent Wall, site manager at the Seaport. "The hard part is to get a tree this big."

A 150-foot tree was found outside Porter a few weeks back by the Quinault Logging Co.

Bolton said the tree was chopped down to 117 feet, which will give the Seaport some wiggle room in case there are problems at either end of the log. The tree was purchased for less than $9,000, Bolton said.

"It weighs in at 27,000 pounds," Wall said. "That's 13 tons. So you don't do anything really fast or do anything without people knowing what's going on."

Bolton said work should be completed in the next week or so.

A cutting blade spins at 3,000 rpm while the lathe turns the log at about eight revolutions per minute. The cutter and motor are mounted on an old World War I Navy gun turret to do the job, Wall said.

Matt Bale, the lathe operator, will have the job of trimming the diameter down to make the tree resemble a mast — tapering the log from nearly 18 inches at the base to 9 inches at the top.

Even when Seaport officials think they've spotted a good tree for a mast, a defect still can be discovered. The Seaport worked up a 96-foot mast for the schooner Virginia sometime back and went through several logs, one with a rock embedded 5 inches into its core. Bolton said the Seaport will likely make $30,000 off the Zodiac job. Thanks mainly to Hollywood jobs, including technical work for the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies, the spar shop has made $800,000 over the last six years, Bolton estimates.

The Zodiac was launched in 1924, originally built for the heirs of the Johnson & Johnson Corp. fortune. It's an education vessel now and often sails with the Seaport's own Lady Washington and Hawaiian Chieftain.

The information in this article, originally published August 2, 2009, was corrected August 3, 2009. Workers at an Aberdeen shop will taper a 150-foot tree from 18 inches at the base to 9 inches at the top to resemble a mast for a ship. An Aberdeen Daily World story on Sunday incorrectly said the tree was 18 feet at the base.