Curved Gaff Jaws
Dear Matt,
I was pleased to see the article in WB No. 303 by professional boatbuilder Greg Rössel on making curved gaff jaws, because it was almost exactly what I, an amateur, had come up with for my own recent build. It’s nice to have one’s solutions validated. What I did differently was to put tapered flats on the end of the gaff, with inner jaw sides to match, as suggested by Bill Garden in his excellent article on the subject in WB No. 59. I also used Garden’s method of sizing the jaws, halyard tongue, and tumbler, which is scalable, with all dimensions related to mast diameter. As is usual with Garden, the resulting proportions are perfect.