building a bronze age boat for Time Team

[robin wood]

Nice one Robin.

How do the bronze edges hold up under use?

Good question. When I first got them I thought they were so soft I would be heading for steel tools at the first opportunity. After a while I managed to get the edges set up so that they held easily for a days hewing between touch ups. If they hit something hard they edge roll.

But a few well aimed taps pulled the edge back in line

Just goes to show harder is not always better. In fact there were plenty of times when I wanted a new shape of tool, for cutting stitch holes for instance. Had I been working with steel it would have meant firing up a forge, shaping, hardening tempering grinding. With the bronze its a quick easy job to cold forge them to the shape you want, a quick hone and start work. If you use them as if they were steel you think they are poor second best but after a while I developed completely different methods of cutting with them and they worked a treat.

 

[Barn Owl]

Thanks Robin.

A few days between hones sounds really good as does the cold forging.


What type of hone would they have used back then,i mean different areas of the country will have different stone.

 

[treadlightly]

Superb stuff Robin, thanks for sharing...

 

[Retired Member southey]

Brilliant! thank you for posting Robin, fascinating project, would they have used any kind of caulking to seal it, or maybe left in the water for it to swell and possibly self seal? I saw the news report and thought it disgraceful that they only focussed on the launch problems and not the actual craft and the work put into it ?

 

[robin wood]

clinker built boats often leak at first and need soaking to waterproof like a barrel. Carvel built boats need lots of caulking to waterproof them. Stitched boats are a bit different, the original had the joints waterproofed by holding packed moss under oak laths over the joint. Ours will too when in the museum but for the sea trials for various reasons we used modern mastic, the problem was we were limited in the amount we could use and where we could apply it as we had to be able to remove it easily afterwards.

re hones, I suspect they did more peening and less honing than us since metal was more valuable. I am not very knowledgeable about bronze age archaeology and others may chip in but I do know that good hones were transported very long distances in prehistory.

 

[Twodogs]

Nice one

Twodogs

 

[Retired Member southey]

Thank you Robin

 

[calgarychef]

What a fantastic project! You should have asked for help, I'd have been there to provide good free labour as long as there was no thinking involved I spent a long time studying the origional one in Dover, such a wonderful thing to contemplate. On yours it looks like the "ears" that the stitching pieces went through were added after, am I right in that assumption? If so were they glued in?

 

[Stringmaker]

Is that Richard Darrah from Rivenoak in some of those pics?

I've met and worked with him and this project would be right in his area of expertise.

 

[Wayland]

Great work there Robin, what a fantastic project to be working on.

 

[robin wood]

What a fantastic project! You should have asked for help, I'd have been there to provide good free labour as long as there was no thinking involved I spent a long time studying the origional one in Dover, such a wonderful thing to contemplate. On yours it looks like the "ears" that the stitching pieces went through were added after, am I right in that assumption? If so were they glued in?

Not sure what the "Ears" are. Nothing glued on, base is 4 main timbers stitched and wedged together then end pieces and top planks stitched on.

Is that Richard Darrah from Rivenoak in some of those pics?

I've met and worked with him and this project would be right in his area of expertise.

Yep that's Richard, known him for years but never worked together, it was a very great pleasure.

 

[salad]

Great thread, thanks for sharing this

 

[The mad welshman]

What a truly beautiful piece of work there Robin..if you get any more projects like that you know where to get helping hands from...Pst Robin..im over here..hehe

 

[Dave]

Great Stuff. Look forward to watching the programme.

 

[Tengu]

I think the Arabian dhows were stitched too, very good boats.

Theres an account in an old icelandic text of a boat visiting them that had been built by the settlers in Greenland. (So they `could` build their own boats! But of course there is timber in Markland.)

The boat was not described but it was of a type strange to the icelanders...Could it have been a stitched boat? (I cant quote this; its mentioned in Kirsten Seavers `Frozen Echo`)

A lot of the settlers were hunters rather than farmers, presumably they were coastal saami rather than norse?

 

[belzeebob23]

Hi Sandbender

If memory serves me , the one at Loch Tay is a dug out.
I was up their a couple of years ago building the bronze age dug out.
https://picasaweb.google.com/110598...AndBoatBuilding?authkey=Gv1sRgCKaG3bKgt7nQ_gE
It was nowhere near as complicated as Robin's build but was a fun time doing

bob

 

[robin wood]

Hi Sandbender

If memory serves me , the one at Loch Tay is a dug out.
I was up their a couple of years ago building the bronze age dug out.
https://picasaweb.google.com/110598...AndBoatBuilding?authkey=Gv1sRgCKaG3bKgt7nQ_gE
It was nowhere near as complicated as Robin's build but was a fun time doing

bob

Nice project, was that Douglas fir? I thought the peening hammer looked like Damian Goodburn's, he spent a few days with us toward the end of our build, there is no one more knowledgeable about ancient boats though we do disagree rather about how the bronze tools were hafted and used.

 

[brambles]

Absolutely beautiful work , very well done indeed

However , on behalf of all the Scots here can I just say ....

... are you sure it's "one of those" in Lock Tay...

... Aaaaaaaarrrrgghhhhh!!! It's bad enough when you sassenachs say that , let alone commit it to writing!

 

[John Fenna]

I am impressed by the work - and also by the edge retention of the bronze!
I am a fan of TT (sad but true) so will undoubltably watch this prog ... and the repeats ... with great interest
Keep up the good work

 

[robin wood]

Absolutely beautiful work , very well done indeed

However , on behalf of all the Scots here can I just say .... ... Aaaaaaaarrrrgghhhhh!!! It's bad enough when you sassenachs say that , let alone commit it to writing!

Fair cop deepest apologies