Home : The New Summer Haze : Measuring
The Art of Arthur Watts
The Story of Summer Haze & The Building of Silver Thread
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Measuring The Original I then made exact templates of the inside body sections, in cardboard, every foot and then transferred them to heavy building paper that I could roll up and take with me. I also made patterns of knees, stem, sternpost and transom and anything else I thought might be useful. John Watt very kindly gave me the original rudder and iron tiller. I didn't bother to measure the sails or spars because they were replacements and made some time after the original gear was stolen. It seemed wiser to work from the historical photos. |
Original oak rudder and galvanized iron tiller. |
The following summer I took the rudder and the roll of patterns to Nova Scotia and began by making templates of molds, transom, stem and other parts. I used thin plywood so the outline could be traced off directly on the stock. I had already ordered the lumber from a source in Falmouth, Nova Scotia. This man was both logger and sawyer and had supplied a local boat builder. I mistakenly assumed he knew his business.
One morning a fisherman friend, Everett Hirtle, called me from a neighbouring island to say that the lumber was on his dock. "It don't look too good, Simon" he said. Sure enough, as soon as I saw the pile I knew he was right. Difficult to build a chicken house out of such stock--let alone a boat. The pine, meant for planking was badly stained, too short and with a confused grain. The oak intended for the keel had so much twist as to be unusable. The remainder of the stock was little better than firewood. It was now August and the chances of finding usable stock not good. I finally did what I should have done in the beginning and went over to the Fisheries Museum in nearby Lunenburg. Cliff Zwicker showed me the planking stock for the Tancook whaler he was building as a museum project. Long beautiful lengths of clear native pine, air dry and ready to use. The trees had been felled the previous winter, sawn and placed on stickers to dry. If you leave pine in the log in warm weather you are liable to get unsightly staining, especially in the sapwood, caused by a mold. |
Detail showing stern post and knee on original boat. Note the stop-water, (lower center) and the beginning of the rabbet for the garboard. Garboards on this boat were nailed with smooth square copper nails-still made by the English firm of Hall & Rice. |
Cliff also gave me a source for knees cut from the roots of local spruce or hackmatack. I drove out the same afternoon to a remote place at the end of a dirt road. Mr. Hatt was in his sixties, partially crippled by an accident which he insisted on describing in grisly detail--like the Ancient Mariner. After this twenty minute diversion he showed me his miniature mill, set up to saw knees.
Getting out knees is hard work because the roots have to be dug up before they can be cut with a chainsaw: embedded stones and grit soon dull the saw--or worse. It was common practice to use a small charge of black powder to loosen things up! I brought with me full-size patterns of the various knees needed for this boat. We looked through several stacks of knees until we found ones whose shape matched my patterns. I picked one heavy knee that was almost exactly the shape of the apron. "I'm going to have to charge you $20 for that one" Mr. Hatt said sorrowfully, but I assured him that was O.K.
I then went to the saw mill, a few miles outside Bridgewater to speak with Jack Turner. There were actually two mills, both sizable operations, either side of a gravel road. I went to the wrong one and was politely advised to "try the other mill" I later found out that years ago the Turner brothers had had a falling out. The result was that Jack Turner moved across to the other side of the road and started his own mill. Jack agreed to get the boat lumber out the coming winter and assured me that it would be just as good as the Museum's--which he had supplied. He was as good as his word. When I returned the following May there was a fine stack of lumber sawn eight quarter--a full two inches--so it could dry without staining and be re-sawn just before pick up. Planks this thin are liable to curl when left out in the sun. All this delayed the building project for a year and it wasn't until August, 2003, that I was finally able to get going. |
Nova Scotian sawyer, Jim Sunderland, cutting the oak keel for Silver Thread. |