Driftwood sailboat

About four years ago, I posted a tutorial on how to make these driftwood sailboats. They were such a fun project, that I wanted to share them again.

I made these for my father in law's 60th birthday party using found materials from the beach and materials I had on hand.

After about a half an hour of beach combing, I picked up nearly all the supplies I needed. I grabbed various sizes of driftwood and as many long skinny straight sticks as I could find. The rest of the supplies, I had on hand. 
I used muslin and a glue gun to piece them together.
I live in the Pacific Northwest. It's springtime...everything is wet. The driftwood was no exception. I wanted to expedite the process so I took my driftwood and sticks home put them on cookie sheets and cooked them in an oven on 250 degrees for about 2 hours.

The only real benefit from the cooking it seemed was that the bugs got cooked out. Yummo! Other than that, it didn't seem to dry the wood out any faster. It only succeed in making my house smell like a stinky beach on a super hot day!

My advice, pick up your driftwood and let it sit for a few days in the sun before starting your project.

Once your driftwood is dry pair it up with a driftwood stick.

I passed this next step on to my husband.

He took calipers to the wood stick, measured it and found the right size drill bit (he tried one smaller than the measurement) and drilled a hole making sure he didn't go all the way through to the bottom. You need a tight fit so that the stick fits snugly in the drilled hole.  

Did I lose you at calipers? Engineers have a way of, shall we say, over engineering things sometimes!  Just drill a hole smaller than your stick. 

Drill your hole.

Again, take caution not to drill all the way through your piece of driftwood.

Once your hole is drilled, you can screw your stick into place.

I must apologize at this point for not having any pictures of the process of making the sails. Each driftwood piece is different, so I just measured how high up I wanted the sail and then how far out I wanted it on each side and cut at an angle on both pieces (you will end up with two triangles). I darn near failed geometry so you probably shouldn't trust me when I say it was a right triangle. Honestly, I have no idea what kind of triangle it is! I tried to always make one triangle just a bit smaller than the other.

 I then put a string of hot glue down each side of the mast (on the straight part of the sail) and secured the muslin to each side. At the bottom of the sail, I put a smaller stick that expanded almost the whole width and then rolled and glued the bottom part of the sail onto that making sure I used a fair amount of glue to attach both sticks in the center where they met.

You can also add a small flag to the top of the stick if you want.

I like how casual and beachy they are.

And they didn't cost me anything but time!

Four years later, I still have a driftwood sailboat that I made sitting on my desk.

I still love it!