Mayflower II Captain's Blog

rough cutting a Knee to shape

In between working on getting the small boats ready for the water work continues on the ship repairs.

In this photo Keith is chain sawing a natural grown English oak knee to shape.

Making the knee is one of the last steps in his restoration project started last year.

The knee stock was donated by Michael Burry, local timber frame artisan and all around nice guy. We were able to get two knees out of the piece he gave us.

Second Knee taking shape.

Danny is shaping the second knee.

After the knees are roughed out they will be power planed smooth on both sides then the outline shape will be sawn and the bevels cut into the back. Finally the knee will be fitted to the space inside the ship from where the old one had been removed.

Ships boat and Shallop ready for launching.

(In the small thumbnail photo I uploaded while preparing this post, the boats looked ready for launching. (Yet another indication of aging eyes). When I just checked the published post I could see the red primer spots that had not been painted over black yet. Rest assured we did put a finish coat of black on the hull before the boats went in the water…

If you have read this blog before you might have seen a very similar picture in years past. These are the museum’s reproduction shallop – the bigger one in the back – and the ships boat – the smaller one in the front. Both boats were designed by William Baker, designer of Mayflower II.

The shallop was built in the winter of 1956-57 at what was once known as Plymouth Marine Railway, on the site of what is Brewer’s marine today. I was contracted by Plimoth Plantation to build the shipsboat in 1991. We built the boat in the then, newly renovated Craft Center.

Boats in for the new season

We launched the boats for the new season this past Friday. Both boats need to swell a bit as they have been out of the water all winter and we haven’t had much rain to pre-swell them. The electric pumps in each boat are tended by our staff during the day and by our security staff at night. When they first went in the water, Friday at noon time, we were pumping once an hour. Today we are down to every four hours or so. By next week the pumps should no longer be necessary, until it rains again that is.

There is a part of most job descriptions that is added to let the employee know that the stated specific tasks outlined in the job description are not the only tasks required to be successful in your job. The following pictures fall into this category. While they have nothing to do with repair and restoration per se, they are one of the many tasks we undertake to keep Mayflower II safe and floating happily at the State Pier in Plymouth.

Grabbing the floating camel to replace a broken chain.

The float camel is really an old wooden spar with a collection of tires filled with floatation strung along it. The camel acts as a floating fender between the ship and the pier. I am not sure why it is called a camel. Thoughts?

Sorting things out

By the way…

These photos were taken by Bob Sylvester. Along with his regular job of working for Guest Services at the Mayflower II, his other duties as assigned apparently include  keeping an eye on the marine staff.

In the main bowl

With the main bits of rigging up there are still a lot of details to take care of with the rigging. In this shot Keith and Danny are tightening the main top mast shroud lanyards. (obviously). They are using chain come-along for extra purchase.

In the following shot Keith is inching his way up the main stay to attach the halyard for the rain awning. We had the main stay loose and pulled over near the main shrouds earlier this spring to bend on the fore course yard braces but we (I) forgot to attach the rain awning halyard at that time. Fortunately we (Keith) fixed the problem.

Just has to reach a little further

A happy crew on the last day of class

This shot was taken this morning at the end of our last class with the Bay farm Montessori School students.

Don’t read anything into Danny, Keith and I being on one side if the boat and the kids on the other. Sometimes during our 8 weeks together it wasn’t always clear who were the instructors and who were the students. I like the think we all learned something from each other.

Thanks for a great class and let’s do it again next year!

When last we checked in with  Keith and Danny they were rebuilding the starboard side of the ship up forward near the fore channel. Well, I am happy to say this project is nearly complete. To be fair to them I have dragged them away from this project for about the last month or so to help rig the ship, make a new rain awning, help me with my project in the stern of the ship, start getting the small boats ready to go in the water, attend preseason training, load the ship with furniture, bedding and a host of small artifacts , and generally prepare our site to open on March 17th.

Other than that I am not sure why they didn’t finish this project sooner. (Heh, heh, just kidding Keith and Danny)

Here are some lovely shots of their work:

(Or I should say, some shots of their lovely work)

In this shot you can see some of the new planks that were steamed and fastened into place on a very curvy part of the ship. Keith is fairing or smoothing off the edges and ends of the planks to make everything neat. We used Angelique here, a dense tropical hardwood that won’t rot in our life time.

In the next shot Danny is attaching a strip of plywood they will use to determine the shape of the oak wale that goes in that last open spot.

Buttoning her up.

Laying out canvas for a new rain awning for Mayflower II.

Here is one of the many projects we have worked on in the last month or so.

The old rain awning, also made of canvas and hemp, and used to cover the main stairway on the ship when it rains, has nearly rotted back to the dust from whence  it came.

Like the old one, the new awning is all hand sewn out of three foot wide panels of canvas. A hemp rope will be sewn around the edges of the entire awning to reinforce it. Finally, small rope grommets will be sewn around holes placed in strategic locations along the edges.

I’ve been waiting for a chance to use that term in an appropriate way!

In this, our next to last boat class, we have bee making steady progress.

Fastening Frames

With the boat turned over there a plenty of smaller projects to keep everyone busy. I this shot, Danny is keeping an eye on one of the students drilling pilot holes through the planks where the frames will be fastened. The frames are attached with wood screws from the outside of the pine plank into the oak frame. The pilot holes, 3/16″ in diameter, allow the screw to be placed correctly from the outside assuring the screws will go into the narrow frames.

The two student in the back of the shot are cleaning off the still soft adhesive that oozes out between frame and planking during the fastening process. When the adhesive dries it is nearly impossible to remove, which is kind of what you want in your adhesive.

Everyone has their task to perform in the frame fastening process.

Pattern Making

Here Keith is guiding a student through the pattern making process. The thin plywood will be shaped to fit up in the bow, the flat edge facing the camera will go against the stem and the v shaped sides will attache to each plank. With the pattern fit, they will then shape  a full thickness piece of wood, called a breasthook, which will be fastened in on the top edge of the planks at the stem. The breasthook reinforces the connection between the two planks and the stem. Traditionally that breasthook would be made from a crook of tree, in small boats often apple wood is employed because apple trees grow kind of crooked and the branches lend themselves to this shape.

Shaping a quarter knee

This shot shows two students putting the finishing touches on a quarter knee. this is reinforcing timber that goes on the top edge of

the plank, in the corner between the side plank and the transom. There is one qua

rter knee on each side of the back of the boat. Again, traditionally in small boats this knee might be made out of apple wood. In a modern shop, due to the lack of availability of this kind of crooked wood, we sometimes used solid pieces of wood, and adjust the pattern to make best use of  the grain of the wood. In the case of the breasthook above, the solid piece of wood is made up three pieces epoxied together  which allows to more closely orient the grain of the wood to the shape of the piece.

Three types of caulking irons each witha specific purpose

This is a shot from a few weeks ago. I was caulking the completed planking on the starboard quarter. The three different irons each have a unique shape and are designed for a specific job.

The bottom iron is known as a bent iron. It is made this way for just the purpose  you see, caulking a seam up against an obstruction. The second iron up is a making, or caulking iron. It has a fine edge designed to wedge cotton, or oakum into a seam. You can see the cotton has been looped loosely in the seam prior to driving it in completely. This looping allows the caulker to control how much or little cotton goes into the seam, depending on how wide or narrow the seam is. The top iron is a setting iron. Its driving edge is blunt and is designed to drive the full width of cotton into the bottom of the the caulking seam all in a bunch.

A good caulking seam is about half the thickness of the plank and open, in this case, about 3/16″ on the outside. Ideally the planks are touch, wood to wood, for the first half of their thickness. I say ideally, because, well you know, we don’t live in a perfect world now do we.

All Hands to pay seams

This shot is both instructional regarding paying seams after the planking has been caulked and primed and it is a testament to the strength of our staging.

Paying is a boat builder’s term for filling the seams with putty after the caulking. we are using a modern, linseed oil based compound. In the 17th century the seams were often filled with molten pitch applied with a mop. Yum.

Last week we started an eight week boat building program with the 7th and 8th grade classes from the Bay Farm Montessori School in Duxbury, MA. The twelve students and two teachers come to the Plantation’s marine shop on Wednesdays from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM.

We are building a traditional “Flat iron” skiff. The side planks are each made from one piece of pine about 18″ wide and 15′ long.

Planning the side planks.

We chose to build only one boat with the kids so that we can focus our attention on the individual tasks at hand. It does make for tight quarters sometimes but it is also a good team building exercise. Nothing builds  “team” like planing over the fingers of the person standing next to you.

Building character while we build a boat.

When both planks are the same size we attached them to the stem, which is a piece of white oak cut into a triangle shape in cross section.

The stem is attached with marine adhesive and bronze screws.

The whole trick to this type of construction is to get both sides planks fastened to the stem the same way so that when we bend the planks around the mold the back ends of the planks meet at the transom equally.

Matching up both sides planks at the stem.

They say many hands make light work. Yes, the girl sitting down on the left is helping to hold the plank.

The boat takes shape.

With about twenty minutes left in the class today we got the side planks attached to the stem, the center mold in and the planks bent around to the transom. It seemed prudent to wait until our next class to fit and fasten in the transom.

Next week the students have testing at their school so they won’t be able to come to the museum. Stay tuned for more…