The bow mast crutch was designed much like Ray Henry did his. Two of the differences were: I did not have a center support on my bow pulpit, and I wanted to keep my anchor mounted to the bow pulpit.

First I selected a piece of plywood which I had in my shop. I then placed it on the bow pulpit and traced my pattern. Because of the anchor bracket, I traced the pattern on the inside of the bow pulpit and extended it past the two supporting stantions about 4 inches. Next I used my saber saw and cut the pattern out and also cut the notch out for the anchor bracket. I knew how wide the notch needed to be and planned for the top plywood plate to extend over the bow pulpit about an inch. I also had to take into account that the bow pulpit is about an inch in diameter.

With this rough cut piece of plywood, I placed it back on the bow pulpit and pushed it as far forward as the front notch would allow. I then could mark the rear of the base just in front of the two support stantions. Back to the shop to use my small table saw to cut the bottom off of the base.

The next step was to build the support. I selected four 8” 2 x 4s. I then cross cut the 2” sides of two to give a 45 degree angle. I then cross cut the 2” sides of the other two to give a 30 degree angle. Next I glued and screwed four 2 x 4 together, gluing the 4” side together and making sure the angles lined up to make a “V” shape in the middle. Then I evened the bottom off to give me a flat surface. You will notice that the base slops up about 15 degrees, so I cut the bottom of the glued 2 x 4s so that they would match the 15 degree slope. I then screwed the support from the bottom of the base.

The last step was to cut the same pattern as the base from another piece of scrap wood. After positioning it 2 inches from the edge of the base, I glued and screwed it into place on the bottom of the base. Next I drew the out line of the base on another piece of scrap wood. Then with a compass, I drew an inside line an inch from the outside line. Out came the saber saw again and I cut to the two outside braces which I then glued and screwed onto the outer sides of the base. I now had a channel for the bow pulpit to fit into so that the mast crutch wouldn’t slide around.

I plugged all of the screw holes with wooden plugs (dowels) and then sanded the whole thing with my belt sander and then my finishing sander.

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