Catching up
If you’re local, you’ve probably seen stories about installing the Morgan’s billet head.
Roger hand-carved this back in 1991 to celebrate the Morgan’s 150th anniversary. The Morgan was a quaker vessel, and as such, her billet head was more conservative than the figureheads or busts that would commonly decorate the bows of merchant vessels of her era. This billet head is a direct copy of the original, now preserved and stored in the climate controlled mill building. Roger did such a nice job that he was asked to carve another one. This second carving was presented to the Chubb Insurance Group in recognition of their longtime support of the museum.
The billet head is painted orange in preparation for applying gold leaf. Matt installed it permanently on July 11th, and now he’s adding the decorative trim that goes from the billet head down to the chain hawspipes.
After her dunking, you may be wondering if there are any leaks in the hull. Yep, not a lot, but a few. Well before we moved her, Tich set up bilge pumps directly under the old manual bilge pump holes.
You can see the holes in the deck from the original pumps here. They’re blocked now to keep the rain out.
After a few days of being in the water, Rob dove on the boat to check a location where we were getting a small but steady flow of water. He brought a jug of milk with him, and released small amounts of it near likely spots for the leak. Roger was inside, monitoring the bilge where the flow was strongest. By radioing to Kevin on the dock, Roger could let Rob know when the milk started to come into the bilge. It’s a simple technique, and it worked well. Rob found a check in one of the original planks that could be closed up with a tar/lead patch when the boat was raised again.
A few other suspect areas were also addressed when the boat was briefly raised last week. Here are Evie and Nick working on a section of original garboard.
And as long as the boat was out of the water, every area that showed any sign of water infiltration was given another coat of bottom paint and bedding.
Jumping back in time a bit, there’s been other work going on up at the bow other than the gammon knee. The cat heads were re-installed a while back, and the risers needed to be refit, and in one area, repaired. Here’s the starboard side,
and the new piece scarfed in on port.
The risers butted up to new knightheads, and so these joints needed to be tuned up a bit. One way to get a very nice fit is to do what’s called a kerf cut with a hand saw. If you have a joint with some slight variations in it, running a saw down the joint will even up those variations. The saw will cut the high points on both sides of the joint, leaving an even kerf (or slot).
When kerfed parts are pushed together, the result is a very tight, even joint.
The caps that go on top of the risers needed to be replaced. Here’s one of the originals that had split along the grain lines.
The lower split is not as obvious as the upper split, in part because the wood below the split had been stripped of paint. The red line shows the original scarf joint where the two pieces were joined. Prior to the split, the board above that line was a single solid piece.
The joint was still solid, but the split wood made the upper piece unusable. The lower piece had been cut to remove it, so that piece was also replaced. We replicated the same scarf joint in the replacements. The new cap goes over the cat head.
You can also see a pad that’s built out around the rail as well.
This helps to protect the riser and cap from the anchor that is stored on the rail.
With the main shop space cleared of big projects, the spars have been moved inside, awaiting our attention.
Trevor has been working on the bowsprit using drawings made of the original.
The first job is to take these measurements and lay them out onto the work.
The big length of ponderosa pine is a little large for this spar, so he has to bring it down to the proper dimension before rounding. Here, he’s marked the depth, made relief cuts with a circular saw, and is now breaking out chunks of wood to get to his line.
Since the piece is tapered, he has to reset his saw for different sections of the spar.
After the depth is roughed out, he comes back with the largest power planer in the shop to go right up to his lines.
He uses the big Makita circular saw to cut the spar to length.
He’ll go around the circumference of the wood with this saw to get accurate, straight lines. Then, he’ll use a hand saw to finish off the middle of the piece.
This week, the hottest week of the summer, we ballasted the boat. Paul has been painting lead bricks in preparation for this event.
We paint them to encapsulate the lead and prevent any lead oxide from escaping as dust. The lead is painted red. Next to the lead are pallets of concrete blocks that will also be used as ballast.
These puppies are heavy. That’s about half a ton there.
Jon, Matt, & Jamie had previously prepped the hold by installing long oak stringers for the concrete blocks to sit on.
The stringers protect the ceiling planks from being abraded by the blocks and provide airflow around the blocks to keep water from being trapped between the blocks and the ceiling.
The finished product.
On ballasting day, it was all hands on, well… below, deck.
Lots of water, lots of fans. The crane arrived early to load the pallets of lead and concrete into the boat.
Waiting for the first pallet.
We started with the lead. Since the boat is heavier back aft, we concentrated on loading the forward end of the boat.
That’s about 9,000# worth.
Next came the concrete block.
It was a very tight fit for the pallet through the hatch.
Then, just like we did with the lead, the blocks were offloaded in bucket brigade fashion.
Matt directed the operation from above and used hand signals to communicate with the crane operator.
Did I mention that we’re in the midst of a heat wave? After work, some of the young pups decided that a dip off the end of the dock was a very very good idea. I couldn’t agree more.
