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Irene Rebuild
Page Ten
6th October 2006
It was
time the Shipwright teams Summer holiday, swanning up and down the
rivers in Arthur Ransom adventures, ended, and went back to hard work.
The last of the beams went in and all the staple knees followed.
Immediately below the beam shelf, indeed helping to support it, is the
next plank referred to as the ‘clamp’. That is now in place but before
we can put the hanging knees in we have to do the fairing on the inner
ceiling. Trunneling goes on apace. We had the good fortune to find a
turner who can produce trunnels for significantly less cost than we
could ourselves. At a guess there are still a thousand to go.
We did a serious assault on her bottom. Cleaning, priming, paying and
priming again. Skilled shipwrights have a habit of avoiding getting
mud on their boots so that preparation is largely left to the junior
members of the team, young Stuart and myself. Chuggs was however,
lured down to caulk and pay the seam between the garboard plank and
the keel. It is known as the Devil for reasons presumably for its
awkwardness, and that is the origin of the term “the Devil to pay” –
and “no pitch hot”.
Meanwhile farmer Martin’s son-in-law a man with a much bigger digger
than ours wrestled one of the logs into an area where we could work on
it.
Shaping a spar from a square sectioned beam is not too difficult. The
centre line on one face is determined by chalk line. The shape of the
spar (pole, taper, cigar) is then marked out from the mid-line and the
two sides planed (or chain sawed and planed) down to the line at right
angles to the first face. The same is done to the original face and
it’s opposite and one finishes with a square spar of the right size
and shape.
The next stage is to make it octagonal. A little stick wide enough to
go across the spar is notched or holed or nailed to divide it into
three parts in a ratio of 5, 7, 5 or 7, 10, 7. The outer notches are
now laid on the edge of the spar and obviously depending on how wide
it is will determine at what angle the stick is. The angle in fact is
not relevant; the constant ratio is. Drawing the stick down the spar
and marking frequently give us two lines five units from the edge and
seven units between them. The ratio remains a constant even in the
taper. Mathematicians among you may have already sussed out Pythagoras
who said “the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the
squares of the other two sides”.
The same lines are drawn on all four faces. You have now at each
corner five units across and five units down putting together making
fifty. The hypotenuse is seven. If squared it becomes forty-nine. Use
the same maths with 7, 10, 7. The corners are then simply cut away or
planed away leaving a spar of eight equal sides. A more complicated
formula you need to get to sixteen. In my experience as spar maker in
chief, simply planing down on the protruding corner you have sixteen
equal faces, simpler and more reliable. Sixteen faces to the round is
a swift job. All very handleable with reasonable chunks of wood. This
tree weighed several tons so the first phase of trying to plane a face
was challenging. However, we got that far and from there we cut the
two vertical faces. John has fabricated a ‘mill’ for the job and Ben
wields a large chainsaw as if it were a draughtsman’s pen.
The other water expedition was a quick trip down to Brunel’s bridge to
measure the air draught was added to the depth of water. By dint of a
disapproved if not actually illegal trespass on the railway line, a
person, name not submitable measured from the parapet to the top of
the arch and on down to the waterline. At the time of that tide there
was 59ft from the top of the arch to the water plus a further 13ft of
water below. A total of 72ft. Our main mast’s foot is 5’4” above the
lowest part of our keel - 65ft of mast makes a total of 70’4” leaving
only 20” to share between draught and air-draught to get under the
bridge. It seemed a good idea to lop a couple of feet off for a 63ft
mast instead. We also calculated if we had 1ft of space between the
top of the main mast in stone work we could stray to 7ft on either
side of midline before hitting trouble – some reassurance.
Meanwhile Ted continued his devotions to her backside creating carlins
for the rudder tunnel and shaping the first of the covering boards.
With all the extra weight going on the stern we decided more support
was necessary and two RSJs snake along under the edge of the beams to
help pick up the end. The Samson post was shaped and put into position
and the last of the stanchions fitted.
I began to be concerned in case all the extra weight we were putting
on would prevent the old girl floating at all. But the recent very
high tides dispersed that idea quickly. Although certainly at this
stage we should have no difficulty getting her off the grid with the
right tide and the right air pressure.
Our Gardners have been rebuilt and we are awaiting delivery. We have
even taken a little time off to build a pontoon so that we can use the
little dinghies right down to low water.
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There is much original wood that we have had to
remove from the ship and we think it possible that people may want to
own a bit of the original timber.
We can supply rough bits, charred bits, big bits and carved
bits – things like name plates, egg cups, coat hangers and coat pegs
with boards bristling with fastenings.
Or you might prefer a block of new Oak.
Soon we will be cutting the ends of the frames down to shear
strake level and that will leave us with a couple of hundred blocks of
6 x 6 of varying lengths. Wood
new or old would be priced at £15.00 a cubic foot (minimum order £5)
plus post and package. Shaped or carved pieces will depend on how much time the
carver has put into the project.
If you have a special idea that you want made by us, we are all
ears.
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