Roger clued me in to a terminology mistake I made the other day, so here’s an illustration of all the parts we’ve been looking at recently along with some descriptions.

In the photo above, the topmast is on top, going out to the left. The lower foremast is below it, heading out to the right.

Cap: Fits over a tenon at the top of the masthead. It has a circular section that the upper mast fits through.

Heel: The base of any mast. The topmast heel fits into a square space made by the Trees.

Fid: A stout wooden pin that fits through a slot in the upper mast and keeps that mast from sliding down through the trees.

Doubling: The area where two masts overlap.

Top: A platform that rests on the trees. It is named for its mast (the foretop in this case).

Trees: Structure composed of cross-members (cross trees) and fore-aft members (trestle trees). The trees slide down the masthead and sit on top of the Hounds. They hold the heel of the mast above them.

Hounds: You can’t see them in this photo, but they are the ledge formed when the squared section of the masthead ends and the round section of the mast begins.

Bibbs: These two stout parts act like shelf supports and bear on the trestle trees.

Alex and Matt agree that everything’s looking good. Check that off the list.

Walt has been working on the trees for the main top. These trees don’t have a top to them, they’re just the bare structure. The lower masthead will come up through the square in the center, and the heel of the t’gallant (top gallant) will rest in the opening on the right. There will be a small metal gate attached later to trap the heel.

Terminology test! Which are the trestle trees and which are the cross trees?
Answer: the trestle trees are going right to left in that photo, and the cross trees are the short bits connecting them.

Riveted for strength, and just about finished.

And because it works so well for vertical spars, big boat builders use the same sort of system for joining long horizontal spars like the Jiboom and Bowsprit. Here’s a cap that Trev has fit onto the end of the bowsprit

This cap has a plate and rod fit through it to help hold it in place, as well as to provide a fastening point for the Dolphin Striker. You can see that plate best in the upper photo. The rod is welded to the plate and comes through the cap. Later it will be threaded and a held in place with a nut.

This is the dolphin striker. You’ll see more of that later I’m sure. The hook at the right end will go through an eye that will go through the plate you saw above.

One more bit of terminology that I just learned. Most of us know that when a mast is tilted off of vertical, the angle of that tilt is called its Rake. As in, “The mainmast has five degrees of rake” When a spar, like the bowsprit or jibbom inclines above horizontal, that inclination is called Steeve. You can also use this either of these terms as a verb: Rake the mast and steeve the jibbom!

Special thanks go out to Roger for all the terminology help. If you’d like to have a desk reference for this sort of thing, we go to Rene de Kerchove’s “International Maritime Dictionary.”

It’s been out there a while. Note the plants that have taken root in the bark. This is live oak, and it had some very tough spots inside. This photo was taken the first day the crew tried to cut it using the chainsaw mill. You can see the trashed chainsaw chain hanging out on the left side.

They did not like cutting this log.

However, they persevered (no choice really) and eventually gave John this log to work with. Here, he’s making the initial shaping cuts with a chainsaw.

[NOTE:  when you see small pictures in a line like the ones below, they make up a small gallery.  When you  click on one, it will expand up to full size.  You can move between the photos using your arrow keys. Close the gallery with the small X in the upper right corner of the gallery.]

He’s drawn the shape that he wants and is cutting down close to that line.

Lots of adze work to cut off the waste.

The cuts act as witness marks and tell him when he’s close to his lines. A power plane finishes up the curve, and then it’s on to defining the next curve.

Flipping on its side.

Hard to believe that this is the same piece. Note the debris pile.

Now, more fine tuning with the pattern,

and some more chain sawing to get to the final shape.

Now we’re talking.

Fastend in, and painted.

Whew. That check on starboard looks ominous, but it’s not deep enough to be a problem.

Walt has been working on the main topmast recently. In case you’re not familiar with the nomenclature here, the main and foremasts are composed of 3 spars, the lower, the top, and the top gallant, abbreviated t’gallant.

By the way, here’s a nice page with many rigging illustrations designed for model ship builders. It may be useful for visualizing some of these terms and parts as we go along.

He starts by taking the round bottom end of the topmast and 8-siding it. Usually things go in the other direction, with stock starting square and going to 8-sided, 16-sided, 32-sided, round. Since we received these spars already turned, we go from round to 8-sided at the ends. He’s marked off the corners of the sides and is now using an adze to get to his final shape.

People often ask if we use traditional tools (like an adze) exclusively, or if we use modern power tools. I usually tell people that we use the tool that works best for the job. In this case, the adze takes a lot of material off quickly and accurately. Walt was able to side the end of the spar by lunchtime.

Walt checked the diameter of the spar and found that it was about an inch oversized at the bottom end, tapering to the proper diameter a ways up its length.

So, how to preserve the nice, even round shape that came from the spar being turned on a lathe, while quickly bringing the diameter down to the proper size? Walt came up with using a router to cut a grooves of set thicknesses in the spar up to the end of the taper.

With these cuts acting as depth witness marks, he was able to run a power plane down the spar until he just nicked the bottom of each groove.

A little hand planing to clean things up and smooth out the curve, and the spar diameter was set.

Note the wheels under the spar. These allow him to spin the spar easily as he works on it. It’s a lot easier than bringing in a forklift and sling to turn the larger spars!

Next, he cuts a slot through the mast near the base. He starts by making a series of holes with a drill and a long bit to define the slot edges. Kevin monitors the drill angle and makes sure that Walt keeps the drill in line with a horizontal guide stick.

With the holes drilled, he uses a chisel to refine the edges of the slot.

With the edges defined, he can use a saw to connect the drilled holes and pull out the waste from the center.

A little cleaning up with a chisel, and the slot is finished.

The upper end of the topmast is squared and tapered (called the Doubling), just like the upper end of the lower foremast. Walt has laid out the lines for this shape and uses a sawzall to cut down to his marks.

As with the lower end, an adze makes quick work of the waste, and he’s on to defining the shoulder of the doubling. The shoulder is tapered to account for the slight mast rake, so he has to make a cut that carries the taper all the way through the spar. He uses a flat pattern going around the spar, set at the proper angle to guide his saw cut.

We’ll cover the first two today.
Trev has finished with all the shaping of the bowsprit. Ali planed off the shellac that had been used to seal the wood, and painted everything.

Trev cut a sloped slot into the bowsprit to capture a line that loops around it.

On a mast, this would be called a hound. Not sure if the same nomenclature holds for the bowsprit.

Next, he makes up two blocks for the outboard end. I’ll try to get the names for these soon…

Each block is bedded in Dolfinite before being fastened down.

Bedding compounds fill up any small gaps in a joint where water could infiltrate and cause rot.

Next comes a series of through holes for hardware. In this photo, Jeff and Kevin are helping Trev guide a very long auger bit as he drills through the spar.

Jeff (right, leaning against the mast) is using a roofing square to establish a vertical line by sighting the lower horizontal along the block that Trev had just installed. He tells Trev if he needs to angle the drill forward or back along the spar. Kevin (hands held out) is sighting along a vertical stick attached to the end of the spar. He tells Trev if he needs to move the drill left or right to stay on center.

Once the hole is drilled, Trev expands and squares the sides of part of the hole to admit the hardware.

There are a number of these eyes to be installed.

You can see the bottoms of three of these eyes protruding from the spar.

They’ll be anchored in place with large washers and pins.

Lastly, the cap is fit to the end of the bowsprit.

This is a split cap, thus the clamps to hold the 2 halves in place. These will eventually be riveted together with long rods, peened over at each end.

The lower foremast has been getting some attention these past few weeks as well. The base of the mast has been slotted to fit over the mast step.

We use a worm-drive saw that has a 12″ long chain saw fitted to it. Since the mast has a 21″ diameter, this saw only makes it a little more than halfway through.  A small platform was attached to the top of the spar to provide a flat surface for the saw . The platform was marked with layout lines to guide the cuts. As the mast was cut, the platform was cut away as well.

This slot looks simple, but it has to be made accurately. It must be right on the center of the spar, the sides need to be just wide enough to accept the mast step without binding, and the base of the slot has a very slight angle so that the mast will cant properly.

With the old mast step in place.

The new step accurately copies this one. so a good fit here will equal a good fit in the boat.

A guide stick was made up to make sure that the angle of the slot was correct.

At the other end of the mast, the cheeks needed to be made to support the top. Here are the old cheeks in place.

The new cheeks are made of live oak.

They have a little stub tenon that goes into a mortise in the mast. These cheeks hold a lot of weight, and they need to be firmly anchored to the mast.

The tenons of the old cheeks had rotted, thus the new ones.

You can see the iron drifts that attached the cheek to the mast. There are two of these, each 1″ in diameter.

The cheeks go against the curve of the mast, so the inner surfaces have to be shaped to fit.

The cheeks also splay out slightly to fit up against the trestle trees (the large supports that underlie the top), so a guide block was made to make sure that the mortise was cut at just the right angle.

Mike has been working on the chafe guards that are let into the square section of the mast (aka the Doubling). Some of the wrought iron plates were cracked, so he used a torch and brazing rod to fill the cracks.

Just after brazing:

And with a little grinding, the repair just shows up as a thin strip of bronze-colored metal.

Mike and Ali have been doing a lot of work on the chain plates. These are the metal parts that tie the standing rigging to the hull of the ship. Despite their name, these chain plates are shaped rods, rather than flat metal plates. Here’s an old one.

Many of the older chain plates can be salvaged, but some had to be replaced. Here are Ali and Mike working on a new one. We’re coming in at the end of the process here. The chain plate has been formed with two loops, one at each end. The end with the smaller loop is heated in a forge,

and carried to the anvil, where Mike hammers the initial bend into it.

He uses a special rounded tool to work with the rod.

They quickly move to a jig that Mike has set up for creating a bend in the chain plate that is specific to the location of the particular part.

Mike clamps one end down to a pin on the jig, and Ali begins to heat the chain plate where the next bend will be.

Mike clamps some flat stock onto the chain plate to make sure that the two rods move as one.

When the metal has reached the proper temperature, Mike slowly bends the chain plate down along the jig.

Checking the bend.

A little more heat.

Another clamp to hold this section of the bend.

Some more heat to help the bend along.

And one last clamp to hold it in place.

Now it can cool in exactly the right position.

More soon!

Jamie has been building a shelf that will hold ballast down in the stern of the boat.

Ali has been spraying a borate salt solution around the hold.

This is a regular task around the boat. Got some free time, spray a little borate.

Rob, Paul, and Matt have been working on the ballast and limber system.

Limber holes in a boat are passages that allow water to freely flow between frame bays at the bottom of the boat. The may be actual fore-aft holes in the frames, or they may simply be a gap between the frames and the keelson. You want water to freely flow through the bilges because it will go to the lowest point in the boat where it can be pumped out. If it couldn’t flow, water could be trapped and stand indefinitely in one area of the boat and cause rot. We want to make sure that the ballast can’t shift and drop down into the limbers, thus blocking the flow of water. Thus the drainage pipe.

Rob has installed a clean-out cord down through the center of the pipe. If debris clog the pipe, the cord can pull through a rag or other object to clear the pipe.

Here’s the installed pipe with some lead ingots on top.

This arrangement will allow the ballast to be stacked up around the pipe while making sure that the limbers are always clear.

The crew has moved the concrete ballast from below the forward hatch to amidships. Ryan is cleaning up the area where the blocks were to minimize the amount of sand and grit that otherwise would make its way down to the bilge.

Moving up one deck, Bob has been working on the head units.

I think we’d all agree that modern toilet facilities are a non-negotiable feature on a vessel at sea, even if they bear no resemblance to the original privies that emptied waste over the side. These units are designed to be removable so that when the boat is back home we can take them out and present the boat in a more original format.

And up to the deck, Ali and Evie have joined forces to continue stripping paint.

Those slots to the right of Ali are where the points of the harpoons go when they’re stored overhead.

John has been working on fitting the upper breast hook.

There’s good news, and bad news. The good news is that he’s developed an excellent system to both hold the breasthook in place and allow it to slide back for fitting. The bad news is that the part has too much curve to it and it doesn’t fit tightly under the cap at the ends.

This is one of those situations that every builder experiences, and they all hate it. The question is whether to try to fix the part, perhaps making do with a patch or scarf in an effort to save the previous work and materials, or to start over.

John bit the bullet and started over with a fresh piece of wood. The new piece is a beast, and has already claimed one of the Lucas Mill’s chains. You can see the chain hanging down to the left.

It’s a pain, but the final product will be right.

Matt has picked up where he left off on the gammon knees.

he has tacked some supports to the boat to hold the piece in position as he trims and fits it.

The other Matt, an IYRS student intern finished up his summer internship working on one of the dories at the museum. He’s patterned off and replaced the outer stem.

Matt has a knack for turning wood as well, and he’s made a whole pile of thole pins
for the museum’s dories.

Nice.

He’s back at IYRS now, finishing up his 2nd year.

Trev has been putting the finishing touches on the bowsprit. Here, he’s using a sander to clean up the rounded areas.

Once the shaping is done, he’ll begin adding the various wooden and metal parts that attach to the bowsprit.

More on that soon.

The bowsprit is a massive timber, but it’s not particularly long. A jibbom is added to the top of the bowsprit to extend it and provide attachments for the various foresails.

The riggers have been working steadily on the standing rigging over at the rope walk. They’ve been doing this for ages and it’s high time that they got a little blog love.

Here are Howard, Sarah and Alex with a cart full of old worming and parceling.

Perhaps you’ve heard the instruction, “Worm and parcel with the lay, turn and serve the other way.” Here’s what they’re talking about. Worming, parceling and serving are used together to seal and protect rigging from the elements. It was (and still is) also done with hemp rope, but in our case the rigging is wire rope.

First, they’ve stripped and cleaned the old rigging (thus the cart full of stuff) and spent hours and hours wire-brushing the bare wire rope. Here are Sarah and Alex.

This is slow work.

NOTE TO ALL PROFESSIONAL RIGGERS:
The following is an explanation done to the best of my current understanding of rigging and rigging terminology. We’ve got some stellar riggers here at the seaport who would handily do a better job at this than me, but they’re not at my house right now, even though I have beer. So here goes… First a photo showing worming, parcelling, and serving.

Let’s break this down. Once cleaned, the riggers lay in worming along the channel (the “lay”) formed between the bundles of smaller wires that make up the rope. The worming acts to take up space and make the shape rounder in cross section. The worming travels along following the lay (thus, “worm and parcel with the lay”) as opposed to crossing the lay. Here’s the worming from the above photo.

Next comes the parceling. The parceling is a long strip of canvas cloth wrapped around the rigging so that it overlaps itself, not unlike handlebar tape on a bike or grip tape on a hockey stick. The parceling is also wrapped along the lay (remember?). This means that the overlaps go along the lay of the rigging.

The parceling is held in place with thin cord cinched down in a running stitch.

Once the parceling is done, the serving is applied. Serving is a pine-tarred hemp twine that’s wrapped very tightly around the parceling.

The riggers use a tool called a serving mallet to apply the service with a consistent pressure.

This mallet, designed by Matt the head rigger, has 2 spools of serving twine attached to a rod.

This whole contraption is spun around the wire rope, now going against the lay. As it goes, it pays out the serving twine and wraps it tightly around the wire rope. Sarah coats the parceling with tar just ahead of the service.

As the service is applied, it squeezes the tar down through the parceling and into the strands of the wire rope, sealing and protecting it from moisture.

The service also provides a degree of chafe resistance as well.

As she goes, Sarah uses cardboard draped over the rigging to keep her from becoming a tarry mess.

It helps, some.

And finally, here’s a little video of the serving process in action. Sarah has tarred the parceling ahead of her, and you can see that the service progressing forward as she wraps it. Finally, she adds a coating of tar to the service as she goes.

The foremast work is moving along steadily. Just above the top (the big platform) the corners of the doubling have wrought iron chafe plates let in. Here’s the old mast:

and the old chafe plates.

Some of the standing rigging loops around the mast here, and without the chafe plates to spread the load, the rigging would crush into the wood. Besides looking awful, that crushing opens up the wood to water infiltration and the jagged splinters wear away the leather chafe protection on the rigging, opening that up to water damage as well.

The chafe guards are let into the mast. Even though they were bedded, water had clearly gotten in behind the guards and caused some rusting.

The rust and old paint was sandblasted off of the old guards.

Some of the guards were cracked, perhaps from cold bending them. We suspect that these are original to the boat because they’re wrought iron and they show substantial signs of wear. We’ll braze the cracks to decrease water infiltration but otherwise re-install them on the new spar just at they are.

We’re replacing the main topmast, and Walt has been working on this lately. The turned spar that we received from the Spar Shop is on the left and the older one that he is copying is on the right.

And in case you were wondering what the plug is at the end of the older topmast…

The end grain is the most vulnerable area of any piece of wood. This is the place where water enters and leaves the wood easily. When water leaves the wood quickly (say, when the wood is drying in the sun), the rapid moisture change causes shrinking and checking. When water enters the wood, rot starts to take hold. The top of these masts can act like rain-catchers, and are naturally prone to rot. One way of dealing with this is to drill a hole into the top of the mast and pour preservatives down into the hole from time to time. The hole is sealed with the plug that you see to minimize water infiltration. We’re not convinced that this is a great strategy, and we’re probably not going to repeat this process with the newer spars. Instead, we’ll do our best to seal the tops of the masts and regularly treat the end grain with borate salts.

More on the spars soon.

Trev has been working on shaping this fellow for a while now, and his progress is more apparent every day. He’s shaped the tenon at the end of the timber and rounded over the top edges.

While the top stays flat with rounded corners, the bottom of the bowsprit will be fully rounded.

Here he’s laying out the guide lines for rounding the underside. Rounding is done in stages, by creating a series of smaller and smaller facets. Here’s what it looks like. The end of the piece is marked with centerlines and the desired circle. In Trev’s case, he’s only doing the upper half of the circle.

Next, 45 degree angles are marked tangent to the circle using a bevel gauge.

The points where those angles intersect the face of the block are carried down the spar as the guide lines you saw above.

There’s also a numerical way to arrive at the 8-sided guide lines. Looking at the drawing again, I’ve marked the width of the 8-sided face as X and the width of the 45 degree tangent faces as Y.

The total width of the face of the part is X + 2Y. The ratio of X:Y is 1.41 : 1, and you can use this ratio to come up with the values for X & Y if you know the width of your piece. So, if Trev’s bowsprit is 20″ wide, you get X + 2Y = 20. Since X = (1.41)Y, we can substitute this into the equation: 1.41Y + 2Y = 20. We can add the 2 Y terms and get 3.41Y = 20. Solving for Y, you get Y = 20/3.41 = 5.86 Since X + 2Y = 20, X = 20 – 11.73 = 8.27.

Whew. And that’s for 8 siding.

After the corners are cut off,

the spar is re-marked for 16-siding. This can be done using a bevel gauge set to 67 !/2 degrees, set on the flat faces with the blade just tangent to the marked circle.

As before, the intersecting lines are marked along the piece, and the high points are taken off.

In real life, it looks like this:

It’s looking very close to round by now. If you take the points off evenly, you’ll end up with a 32-sided spar. This is very very close to round.

Trev uses a power planer to make long, consistent cuts as he takes off the corners.

After that, all the final rounding is done by sanding.

As they say, it’s easy once you know how. You may have noticed that in the photo of Trev marking the guide lines that he’s having them taper to a point. There’s no formula for doing that taper, he uses his eye and experience.

The other big spar in the shop is the lower foremast. This spar was turned at the Spar Shop at Gray’s Harbor Historical Seaport in Aberdeen WA.

The old foremast was not in very good shape, and it had been treated with pentachorophenol, an excellent wood preservative that is naturally pretty toxic to everything and everyone.

It wasn’t worth putting it back into a boat right through the fo’c’sel where the crew would be sleeping.

The old spar was measured, and all the hardware locations recorded.

The hardware was then cleaned up and put onto the new spar to make sure that everything fit properly.

This is the spider band.

The spider band will attach to the foremast about waist height above the deck. The tubes hold the belaying pins (the wooden rods that are used for securing lines that go up to the sails)

This is the futtock band.

And how it will look in place:

This piece is a bit trickier to explain, and perhaps I’ll just let Wikipedia tackle it.

This spar was turned along its entire length when we received it, and top 11′ or so needed to be made into a tapered square. Here’s what we’re talking about (from the Morgan model)

The tapered section is called the Doubling, because this is where the lower foremast overlaps the fore topmast. There is a platform, called the Top which slides down over this tapered section and lands on the shoulder created by the round section below the taper. The top has a square opening in it that receives the lower section of the top mast.

At the top of the tapered section is a large wooden piece called the Cap. This fits onto a tenon at the top of the taper and has a round hole in it that the top mast goes through. This is the mizzen cap, but they all look pretty much the same.

The Cap and Top hold the topmast in two places, just like the mast partner and mast step hold the lower section of a mast as is goes through the deck to the keel.

In the previous post, you saw the topmost end of the lower foremast laid out for the taper.

This taper was laid out using long battens to create cut lines, and then the rough flats were formed using a chainsaw, axe, and adze.

These were cleaned up with hand and power planes.

The level is used to make sure that there is no twist along the length of the flat surface. If there was twist, the level would show that area as slightly sloped to one side.

The spar rakes aft just a little bit, and thus, the shoulder where the top sits needs to be beveled to keep the top level. It was easy to measure the existing bevel, but a little tricky to transfer the shape of the flat, angled shelf onto the round surface of the spar. Luckily, we have a laser guide that’s perfect for the job. The laser projects a flat plane of light that, when properly positioned, marks the exact location of the bevel across the curve of the spar.

I know, it’s definitely NOT how they would have done this in 1841. They would have used a steam-powered laser of course…

Once marked, the bevel can be cut with a handsaw, and tuned up with chisels and hand planes.

After that, the cap is slid onto the spar and the fit checked.

Not bad.

Comealongs and a rolling floor jack are used to slide the heavy top along the mast as it’s checked and adjusted.

Ali has been busy painting up on the foredeck recently. Everything is looking very nice and finished there.

She’s also been stripping old paint and prepping the upper deck.

That’s a huge job.

John has been working on the breasthook that ties the sides of the boat together just above the bowsprit. It will go across the opening to the right of Mariah.

There’s a lot of shape to this piece.

Dean forked it up to the boat the other day

It just made it… we’d be toast without the boom extension.

John built a platform for the breasthook to slide on for final fitting to the hull.

He’ll be able to slide the piece to the boat, check the fit, slide it out of the way, tune it up, slide it back… repeat, repeat.

Jamie, Matt, and Nick have been working down in the hold getting the foremast step properly located and attached.

The base of the foremast notches across the keelson,

and the step captures it to prevent fore-aft movement.

The main mast step has also been installed.

This is an interesting piece. If you’re familiar with mast steps, you’ll recognize the mortise cut into the step to receive the tenon from the base of the mast. But unlike most mast steps, this one has a large athwartships span. It is more common for mast steps to be oriented in the fore-aft direction, like this much smaller NY 30′s step.

The idea of having the mast step run along the length of the boat is usually to spread the load of the mast across multiple frames. We believe that the main mast steps in whaling ships are oriented side-to-side because of the mast stresses particular to these types of vessels. In a whaling ship the main mast has significant side loading. Whale blubber is pulled off of the whale and hauled up over the starboard side of the ship using a block and tackle attached to the main mast. This would exert a great deal of side stress on the mast. These ships were also hove down (literally pulled over sideways) by their main masts to expose their undersides for repair at port.

The ballast has been moved around a bit down below. We’ve shifted a sizable portion of the led forward and along the keel to balance the boat.

This is a work in progress, and we’ll be adjusting this more over time. In the meantime, we’ve got a lot more lead for the final ballasting next year.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with a few images from the antique marine engine show that Scott organizes here each year. First, a small thing. This is a working scale model of the steam engine in the Sabino (one of the seaport’s boats that operate on the Mystic river). Here’s a video of the original:

And here’s the model, built by Greg Young.

And this amazing thing is an actual wrench that Greg made specifically to work with the custom nuts that he made for this model.

And on the other end of the scale, seaport staff and volunteers have been working for over a year on an Atlas Imperial engine that was donated to the seaport last spring. They finally got it up and running just before the show. You could feel the earth move when this beast got going. Scott is the fellow in charge of the vise-grip throttle.

The day started out with fast-moving patches of rain,

but nothing that lasted long.

We set up the chairs and bunting, removed some of the aft poppets, and went over the final preparations for the festivities, and then had our own small toast.

Quentin said a few good words, offered a drink to the boat and one to Neptune. Boom! A huge thunderclap crashed across the shipyard just as he finished speaking. We all agreed, that was a good sign.

Sure enough, the weather cleared up, and the rest of the day was just right.

The ceremony and actual launch went off without a hitch, and we are all in awe of the sheer magnitude of behind the scenes work and rehearsal it took to pull it off. Our hats are off to the administration for their efforts.

In the weeks and months following the launch, the women apprentices will all be scattering to the four winds. Launch day was a good time to get them all together for a group photo.

They have been amazing. Sometimes visitors come through and remark that they’re surprised that we “let” the women work on the boat and we let them know that the women work as hard, if not harder, than any man in the yard. They dove into any task given to them, no matter how mundane or gnarly, without complaint and usually with a smile. They will be sorely missed.

And now, things have settled down. The boat is slowly swelling up and making less water every day.

She’s sitting very high in the water now, and it will be interesting to see how the addition of the rig will change that.

The ballast will be adjusted over the coming months, and the final ballasting will be done next summer down in New London before she sets sail.

A lot more lead and concrete will go into the boat before she sails. Some of the crew have been carefully cleaning and repainting more lead pigs in preparation for the next round of ballasting.

There is much yet to do before the Morgan goes sailing.

Up until now, the boat has never needed a functioning head, but that will change as she gets a crew and passengers. Bob has taken the lead in creating modular heads that can be easily assembled and disassembled (for when the boat returns to the seaport). These are some of the marine plywood panels that will make up the heads (including showers!) getting a good coat of sealer,

followed by paint.

Kevin has led a team of apprentices in re-canvassing and repainting the top of the hurricane house.

Jeff has been working on a full-size mock up of the generator room down in the hold. Fuel storage for the generator will be in tanks below the room.

This view is looking aft from about amidships.

We found that our wax/rosin mixture for filling spike holes in the forward bulkhead was softer than we’d like, especially during the bout of hot weather we had a few weeks back. Mariah and Ali have been cleaning out the old mixture and replacing it with a new mixture that uses a higher concentration of rosin.

The next big push will be to get the spars and rigging in order. More photos of that soon. As a tease, here’s the lower foremast being laid out for the doubling.

The doubling is a tapered square section of the mast where the topmast joins the lower mast.

We brought the boat up one last time from her partial soaking on Friday and gave her a good cleaning.

We even found a dropped crowbar and tape measure that went in the water but landed on the lift dock! That was a good surprise.

All hands turned out to give the boat one last big scrub down.

Rainbow!

That’s a good omen.

Honestly, we’re all feeling very good about the shape she’s in. We’re also very glad that it looks like tomorrow’s weather will be perfect. Still a little warm, but much better than it has been all week. We hope to see you at the festivities!

If you can’t make it, we will be live streaming the event on our website.

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.

Let’s start with moving the boat down to the lift dock. This was a big milestone, and we were busy up until the moment that Scott and Dean began pushing. Jon got the last of the depth numbers attached to the rudder

while Rob touched up the paint on the half-round bordering the name board.

The stair tower has been finished for a while, but we built additional scaffolding on the lift dock itself to allow access to the stair tower.

This will make sense soon.

While the side pull took much of the day, pushing the boat down to the dock took all of two minutes. Here’s a video:

The day after the push, we had a “getting wet” party with just staff. The museum’s administration cooked up burgers and dogs (very well too), we added snacks and desserts to make it a feast. It was a fine way to finish up the day. Around 5:30 we gathered at the boat,

and Scott lowered her into about 6′ of water to start the swelling process.

A big cheer went up when she touched, and someone shot off a signal cannon.

A number of us went out to see her from the stern. She looks so different now that she’s partially submerged.

By the way, remember the scaffolding on the left?

That scaffolding was set up on the lift dock, so it went down with the boat. The idea was that museum guests would need to walk over open water to get to the stair tower when the boat was in her swelling up period. The wasn’t enough space between the lift dock winches and the open water for people to safely walk around to get to the stair tower, so a platform was built on top of the scaffolding for people to walk on.

Unfortunately, there was a miscommunication about how deep the boat would be going, and the scaffolding ended up being too low.

Oops. Back to the drawing board. The next day we raised the boat back up, removed the scaffolding, and whipped up a very good alternate walkway system.

We lowered her again, added some scaffolding at the bow to continue work on the gammon and bobstay chain plates, and all was well.

So, back to the jobs at hand. Matt’s been working on the gammon and all the associated parts that go with it. The gammon projects out from the stem and helps to support the bowsprit.

There are a number of parts to the gammon, and here’s how the whole assembly looked back in 2010.

This photo comes from an excellent blog by one of the museum’s long-time volunteers. You can find the rest of his blog here.

Matt has been using the older parts to guide the building of the new ones.

These are long supports that come up from the beaded strakes and connect to the sides of the gammon.

There are a number of other parts that tie into the gammon as well. You can see the lower curved parts laid out on the gammon here.

Matt is making these out of some of the old Charlestown wood. Here, he’s cut into the top of the rough stock to establish the thickness and twist.

The cuts guide him as he uses a broad axe to hog away the top of part. Here’s the old part that he’s duplicating.

Jon is next to him up on the scaffolding, working on a bolster (a big wooden pad) that goes between the anchor chain pipe and the hull. That’s why the pipe projects so far out from the boat.

More soon!

In the days before the side pull, the apprentices had been busily cleaning out the area beneath the boat. They wanted to make sure that the tracks were completely clear of debris for the pull.

Even a pebble on the track could act as a brake.

Some areas really needed a lot of work.

That’s 3 1/2 years of debris accumulation.

A few large shores were added to make sure that the hull was well supported aft.

There were two tall transom supports that went from the boat to the ground.

Since these wouldn’t move with the cradle, they were removed just before the pull.

The final bits of staging and scaffolding were removed in the days before the pull,

and finally, we were able to get an unimpeded view of her bow.

Those green lines going down the hull were part of a measuring system. More on that in the next blog post.

The crane came early Monday morning and the riggers installed some temporary, decorative, masts.

These will act as stand-ins for actual spars during the launch.

Down on the ground, Dean and Scott set up the come-a-longs and chain for the pull.

The shores were all given an extra bit of bracing with 2x4s to make sure that they didn’t shift during the move.

The tracks and concrete pad were given one last thorough sweeping to make sure that the area was completely free of debris.

The top section of the boat’s crane was removed to minimize weight up high,

and lastly, the landing that connected the stair tower to the boat was lifted off.

At last. Around 10:15, we started the pull. Many of us took turns cranking away at the four 6-ton come-a-longs that were hooked to the boat.

Here is a short video of the boat moving sideways. You’ll hear a sharp noise at one point as the cradle bolts release a little strain. No worries, perfectly normal.

As you can see, the boat moved very very slowly. In fact, it was only when we could view the ship next to a clear reference point, like the stair tower, that the progress became obvious.

There was a good slideshow of scenes from the move over at The Day.

By 1:00, the move was done, and she towered over the shop and visitors gallery.

Scott and Jim began the process of turning the wheels on the cradle to face down to the lift dock. They start by placing a high power hydraulic jack (that yellow and silver puck) beneath the cradle.

Scott lubes the wheel pivot and turns the wheel to face down the track.

He only did one side of the boat for now. With half of the wheels in opposition, there is no possible way that the boat could be rolled either down to the lift dock or back along the side tracks.

We set up a ladder for access to the boat, installed one more decorative spar,

and called it a day.

It was a good move, very well thought out and perfectly executed. Tomorrow we’ll push her to the lift dock and get her wet to start the planks swelling. More on that soon.

In the meantime, here’s a great little time lapse video done by our friends at The Day, showing the removal of the cover and scaffolding.