Two posts tonight busy day.

 Hi everybody, hope you are all well. Two blogs tonight , been a nice day with lots to see.
Petra has been for some time trying to sort out wood , so she can make new lee boards for her lovely dutch barge.
Now nobody shout at me if i don't get this right, but lee boards are a bit like a drop keel.  There is one on each side of the boat and when sailing , the one on the lee side of the wind.[the side the wind is not coming from] is allowed to go down by means of a rope [ might be called sheet, still confused over the names of boaty bits] The lee board can be adjusted by this rope to the height /depth desired. They stop flat bottomed boats being pushed sideways by the wind.. Right thats all the techy stuff i am going to say about lee boards, before i dig myself in to a hole and i get the feeling i may be editing this bit [ and yes i did have to] in the future. What i will say i know to be true , is they are beautiful. They can tuck in tight with a lovely little bow wave of their own coming of each side of the board and joining back up again just after it has left the leeboard. It is abit entrancing to watch . Or it can spread away from the boat and even do a slow circling motion that looks like a whales fin. All achieved by the lovely smooth action of a swivel pin type joint. Yep i don't know the proper name of that e 
ither. It just does a lot of things all in one joint .
Petra being a really good shipwright is of course making her own and looking forward to doing them. It would terrify the hell out of me , which is why shipwrights exist. Well she knows what she is doing  and i can't wait to see the finished product. Everything else she has done that i have seen has been not just functional but beautiful too .
So she got her big beams but they need the width lessened. Its oak she is using . She needs a great big table saw which she doesn't have . But a call got that sorted and we gave her a hand loading the beams in to the trailer to go get them cut. I found out i have went abit soft down here and will need to get myself back in shape. I do really enjoy this type of work.Makes you feel like you have actually done something.
Off to Harwich and the Mayflower heritage centre. Who have the bloody big saw that Petra needs.


 For those that don't know and i was one of them till today. The Mayflower a British merchant ship but built to a dutch design , Sailed from here in Harwich with a Harwich Captain to Portsmouth and then to America  in  September 1620 carrying 102 passengers and about 30 crew and arrived on November the eleventh in the wrong place but it all got sorted  and they stayed.
The Mayflower heritage centre has some fantastic exhibits in its visitor centre and is building a fantastic replica that will stand in front of the visitor centre. It is not open yet but it is getting there and with the dedication of all involved will be a great experience for all the family.
They have a good workshop and Petra Mark , one of the guys that is working on the project Ash and me , spent the morning getting all 17 of Petras oak beams down to the right size.. I have to be honest and say i didn't do that much and after doing a bit of a boo boo, pulling instead of just guiding , kept to the numpty jobs where i didn't get in the way. I did enjoy myself even while cursing the breathing mask for steaming my glasses up so i couldn't see and turning my chin into a prune because of the sauna treatment the mask gave me But safety first. I could be sarcastic and say , it isn't very safe not being able to see hear and breathing steam, but hey that's HSE.

So the beams got finished and loaded and everything cleaned up. Ash took us on a little tour, but thats what the other blog will be about as it deserves a blog of its own.
Got the beams back to the workshop ,unloaded and laid out ready for Petra to do her magic on them and turn them into something functional and of course beautiful.
I shall be working back at our old part of the country this winter but will hopefully get some further pictures of Petras progress on her lee boards for you.



 Bloody big saw.
All done and unloading begins.
Good days work done and enjoyed . Learned alot .
1 oak beams are heavy and can bite back.
2 Petras a dab hand at reversing a trailer.
3 Petra doesn't get annoyed , even if you do a boo boo
4 Mark has a smile on his face everytime  he works with big scary machinary , and he knows what to do.
5 lee boards are more sculpted than made.
6oak sawdust smells lovely ,but doesn't taste nice
and lots more , but on to blog number two.

Comments

  1. Unknown27 October 2017 at 02:26

    Like the big saw could do with it in The Mens Shed. PS. Liked your history lesson. Very informative - I think

    ReplyDelete

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