Home : The New Summer Haze : Construction
The Art of Arthur Watts
The Story of Summer Haze & The Building of Silver Thread
Construction of Silver Thread One feature in the original Summer Haze that puzzled me was the two-piece keel, one on top of the other, nailed together. This made no sense to me so I asked the Cornish gig-builder Ralph Bird what he thought. Ralph reminded me that these are heavy boats, not easily picked up and carried, so would have been dragged--with or without benefit of rollers. He concluded that when the keel had simply been worn down over the years it was finally planed smooth and the equivalent of an oak shoe added. |
Detail showing bow of original Summer Haze. Note the heavy apron behind the stem and the mast step bearing on it. What appears to be a two-piece keel is actually a shoe nailed to the original keel. |
The early Cornish builders used rebated keels because there was no reliable way to connect a keel with the hog piece (also called a keel batten). Bronze bolts were not an option and even a 4-in. copper nail was good only until the head had been worn down by wear and tear.
Traditional rebated keel. |
Keel with hog piece (keel batten). |
Fitting a garboard to a rebated keel is awkward at best. The plank cannot be hung until at least some of the twist--nearly 90 degrees at the transom--has been steamed into it. Also, the angle of the nails is crucial so they neither split the plank nor break out through the top of the keel.
The rebate is best roughed in on the bench as otherwise one is working at knee height--easy for the young and limber but a sore trial for the elderly.
At the time that the gigs were built the square copper nails would have been 'ragged,' or barbed like a fish hook, to keep them from working loose. Ragging was done using a chisel. An alternative is to force a small copper washer (called a rove) down over the point of the nail, cut it off close to the rove and then peen the cut end over with a hammer. The nail thus becomes a rivet with a head at one end and a rove at the other. This makes a strong, durable fastening that still has some flexibility. Circular roves could be punched out of sheet copper or diamond-shaped ones cut with tin snips. Obviously, the latter style was more economical than the round ones. |
Ragged nail. |
The hide glues of the period were useless when exposed to water and damp and never used in boatbuilding. When joining planks edge to edge, the blade of a rudder, for example, bronze drift pins (or drift bolts) were commonly used. These were short lengths of bronze rod driven into under-sized holes in the same fashion as wooden dowel pins. The pilot holes must be sized so the drifts hold without splitting the wood--which calls for nice judgment.
Bronze screws were not available until the early 1900's, so bronze drifts, riveted copper nails and copper tacks were widely used in small boat construction.
Silver Thread is set up with all molds in place. |
Local boatbuilder, Kevin Wambach is fitting the first plank, the garboard. |
steamed to take the almost 90° twist.