Mermaid is an Itchen Ferry. These small gaff-rigged cutters were originally used for fishing in the Solent, and often raced in town regattas. Mermaid’s final resting place is Boathouse 4, where she is used for planking practice by the IBTC students. Each student puts on a plank, and the practice planks are then removed, to be duly replaced by successive cohorts of students.

The preparing and fitting of my practice shutter plank went remarkably smoothly. Just a tiny gap towards the bow, which would ‘take up’ if she were ever to go back in the water.

With wood, the force of expansion with increasing moisture content exceeds that required to compress the wood. So, when ‘taking up’ occurs, the expanding planks compress the caulking seam (and the caulking material) sufficiently to dent the adjoining edges of the plank and make a better seal. That’s why traditional wooden boats open up when dried out, and are really best left in the water, with only brief periods out for repairs and antifouling.

Practice plank fitted, it’s time to do my City and Guilds ‘test plank.’ Normally, C&G planks are not shutter planks, because they’re more difficult. Happy to do another shutter plank? I was asked. “Yes, of course,” I said, my fingers firmly crossed.

So, it’s back to Lilian:

I cut the plank to size, put the bevels on the edges and …

… she was nearly there when I tried my ‘first fit.’

After much to and fro-ing between boat and bench, to take off just a few shavings at a time, I got her ‘home.’ The gaps disappeared as I got the plank seated right in – what a relief … I was really pleased!

I am now making a scarf joint for the joint with the plank that is to continue forward to the stem (bow). I will then add a small bevel for caulking before priming the plank and fixing it in place with screws and roved copper nails.

And planes?

Well, the inner aspect of the plank has to be bollowed or ‘backed out.’ This is get the plank to fit to the inner curve of the hull and to lie nicely against the timbers (ribs). Templates are made for each timber and the plank is shaped to fit using a bollow plane.

I had an old wooden plane with a rocker, but no transverse curvature, so I fettled this by adding a transverse curve to the sole, and grinding the blade to shape. This worked well, getting the plank to fit at each station, but I needed a different plane to even out the inner curve long the length of the plank.

In my worksop (Doc’s Den), I found a wooden plane with a flat sole. Ideal, I thought – I just need to put a transverse curve on the sole and it will work a treat.

I shaped the sole, and then the iron; rubbed in boiled Linseed oil; and re-glued the handles. The next day, at the Boathouse, I noticed the maker’s stamp on the plane:

Curious, I went to Google, and found that this plane was made in New South Wales, Australia, by Berg Tools. They made wooden Planes in the 1940s and 1950s. And there was picture of a plane, just like ‘my’ plane!

Anyway, it worked a treat: the ‘swish, swish’ sound, as it smoothed and bollowed out the inner surface of my plank, was wonderful.

I have altered a plane that I now know to be my Dad’s, but I have made it useful and fit for the task at hand. I’d like to think that he wouldn’t mind my adjustments, and would be happy that I had found a good use for it, pleased that I had found pleasure in its efficient and effective shaping of my test plank.

Well, I am pleased to report that my plank repair went OK and, after a second steaming session, we had the repair in place – albeit with a lot of clamps! I pulled the wood out of the steam box and ran to get it fixed in place – just a few minutes to work the wood before the heat started to dissipate too much to allow further movement.

Now, to caulking. Caulking is the technique of driving oakum (rope fibres and tar) or – as here – cotton into the plank seams, to make them watertight. Locally, there were teams of men who would be called in to caulk ships. Many of these teams came from the Isle of Wight – hence the term “Caulk Heads” for the island’s residents.

The caulking cotton is pleated in, and then driven home. A set of caulking irons numbers about a dozen, and the caulking mallet has iron hoops to lend it heft. Thankfully, I don’t need a set, as a single iron fetches £10-15 and a mallet about £90.

A Tudor interlude.

The 26th and 27th of July, saw me doing some Tudor shipwright work. The 16thC Mary Rose museum is nearby, and the College has long run a module on old shipwright techniques. We have had a trip to the woods on the Stansted estate to look at how shipwrights would select trees for timber, and this phase was to make some parts for a ‘Jollywat’ – a tender/deck boat – for the Mary Rose. The Jollywat became the more familiar Jolly boat.

So, I did some axing and adzing and marking out of timbers for the proposed Jollywat.

Back to my plank repair:

Red lead powder (rather toxic) is mixed into ordinary putty – the same sort of putty that is used in wooden window frames. The red lead stops marine micro-organisms from trying to eat the caulking material.

I have filled the holes left from removing the brass tacks that held the tingle in place, using thin sticks of oak – a process called ‘sprigging.’ The repair is now completed, and I am pleased and relieved in equal measure – glad too to be moving on to …

… my ‘practice plank.’ Yes, after doing a very difficult plank repair, I am putting a plank on an old boat called Mermaid as part of the college’s set curriculum. We do a ‘Practice plank’ and then a City & Guilds test plank.

Planks/strakes are generally put onto the boat from the bottom up and from the top down. That results in a gap in the middle of the hull, which is filled by the final plank, called a ‘shutter plank’. Fitting shutter planks is doubly difficult compared with the other planks

So, naturally, I have opted to do a ‘shutter plank.’ Well, I didn’t think I should do a simple plank after my recent repair on Tom Sherrin!

And finally, … to Valerie.

Today, my friend Craig and I went for a bit of a sail. We had both been given a trip on an 1895 gaff yawl called Valerie as a Christmas Present. What a beautiful boat she is, and it was absolutely super to sail on her in the Solent.

After discussing the IBTC course, I said to the skipper that if he was extending his fleet, I’d be available for work in 7-8 months’ time. Alas, he’s planning to downsize his operation. “Would you sell Valerie?” I asked. “Any boat is available for sale” he replied. So, I asked him what’s she’s worth, but he just said that she’d fetch three times the price if he sold her in the Med.

Ah well, one can but dream … just hope my shutter plank isn’t a nightmare!

Staying with Tom Sherrin, my next job was to remove a ‘tingle’ and take a look beneath it.

A tingle is a batten or board used as a patch to cover a split or damage to the planking of a boat. Patches can also be made with lead or copper plate. Properly caulked and fastened, a tingle provides a sturdy repair until the damaged plank can be properly replaced.

At the forefoot on the starboard side there was a large copper tingle.  It probably covered a broken plank. The tingle had to come off, and whatever lay beneath would need a proper repair.

So this repair was unsuccessful, either initially, or it failed some time later. That’s why a tingle was added to fix the leak, until a substantive repair could be done.

A plank repair is called for. Step forward Stuart Morgan!!!

I cut back the damaged section, and scarfed the end of the plank.

Time for the dark art of spiling.

Spiling is a way of marking out the shape of part of a boat, where it is curved or otherwise complex, and cannot be fitted directly. A spiling batten is laid over the gap to be filled, such as a plank or bulkhead. The accurate lines of the edges for the piece being made are then drawn onto the spiling batten. There are at least two ways of making those lines – and, of course, I used both!

I now need to shape my repair piece to fit in place, getting the bevels right by using the information on my bevel board. All this while being unable to offer up the board to the hole, because it is straight and needs to be both curved and twisted.

And here’s where the skinning of cats comes in.

Ask the opinion of three doctors, and you’ll probably get three different answers. So it is with boatbuilders. There are seemingly several ways to skin every cat … every task in building or repairing a boat.

We are short of Instructors due to sickness and people leaving, and due to difficulty finding replacements – a bit like General Practice! The paradox is, that, nevertheless, there are often multiple varied opinions on how we could/should complete each project. This plank repair has exemplified the issue.

The initial advice, was to carve the repair piece to the inner shape, and then carve out the outer face. It would be difficult. The alternative was to laminate a repair piece on a jig, but this would be no less complicated or difficult. On Thursday, it was suggested that the repair piece could be steamed to shape, though others disagreed that this was possible. Nevertheless, the final decision is to try and steam the repair in place, albeit this is something of an “experiment.”

All I want, is to do a good job, and to enjoy the work. Watch this space.

Tom Sherrin is a Poole Harbour Pilot Launch, designed in the 1960s by John Askham of Bembridge, Isle of Wight, and built by James and Caddy of Weymouth.   She was launched in 1970, and served as a pilot cutter until 1988, and was subsequently sold to the Harbourmaster in Alderney, for use as a pilot boat, work boat and occasional push tug. In 2000 she was purchased by the MVS (Maritime Volunteer Service) in Poole. She came to Boathouse 4 in December 2015.

There is still much to be done for her restoration (lots of pics on this hyperlink), and my first task on this boat was a minor repair, requiring a ‘graving piece.’

Rather than replace an area of minor damage, it is often possible to make a repair by fitting a graving piece. This is a small piece of wood, often diamond-shaped, or an oblong with pointed ends, laid into the damaged area, once the damaged timber has been removed.

A graving piece, often nicknamed ‘gravy bit’, is also known as a Dutchman repair or just Dutchman – one famous small yard, Hilliards, uses the nickname ‘little boy’. Of course, the reference to Dutchmen and little boys, is to the apocryphal little Dutch boy who put his finger in the dyke to stop a leak.

After deciding how much timber needs to be removed, the graving piece is made, just big enough to cover the damaged area.

The graving piece is cut out of a piece of wood that is thicker than the depth of the repair, making it both stronger and easier to handle. Once fitted it is easy to remove excess thickness with a plane or a sharp chisel.

Next, the graving piece is put in place on the plank, and carefully scribed around using a knife to ensure that the scribed lines perfectly define the shape of the graving piece. The damaged area is now chopped out.

The graving piece is then glued into place, and often screws or other fixings are added once the the excess thickness has been removed to make the patch repair level with the surrounding wood.

On the keel of Tom Sherrin, just aft of the bow, a knot in the oak had split open (probably due to the drying out of the boat). The hole created extended right through the four inch thick keel.

A two part Dutchman repair was agreed. This is known as a ‘top hat’ repair, because the outside graving piece overlaps the deeper part, like the brim of a top hat. This has the advantage of the water pressure pushing the outer part against the inner part, making a sounder repair.

My fellow student, Tom, did a one piece repair to the smaller defect on the other side.

As I will elaborate upon in my next post, there is more than one way to skin a cat, and that’s certainly the case here. As the Head of the College said, “In a commercial yard, you’d just fill the hole with epoxy and wood fibres, and have the job done within an hour or two.” This, after I had spent a few days doing this repair! Never mind, it’s always good to learn the gold standard techniques, and gain experience and skills in doing that … you can learn the short cuts later.

It’s like that in medicine and, no doubt, in other professions too. As medical students, we learnt how to ‘clerk’ a patient by taking a full history and performing a full examination … taking nearly an hour at first to do so. On qualifying, we were clerking in hospital admissions in a fraction of the time. A few years later, it was 10 minute consultations in General Practice!

I sometimes feel frustrated at how long it takes me, to complete a job on a boat. The others feel the same. Worth remembering then, that everything we are doing is for the first time; how one does speed up after the first time of doing something new; and that no skill comes without repetition and experience.

My next ‘gravy bit’ won’t take me half as long!

Three weeks ago, we moved from lofting to Big Boat Boatbuilding, starting with making and fitting new quarter knees and refashioning some floors on Lilian.

The Lilian is a 25ft. open motor launch built in 1932 by Hincks Boat builders of Appledore in North Devon.  She was commissioned by Mr. Plumber, the owner of the Anchor Hotel at Porlock Weir, to take guests on sightseeing tours of the Exmoor coastline, pick up passengers from the paddle steamers Waverley and Balmoral and bring them ashore for cream teas etc. Later, she was used for commercial fishing until 1984, and has been in private use since then.

She is of Carvel construction, and was built with Larch on Oak with a solid Elm stern and was powered by a three cylinder diesel engine. 

With a new keel, new planks, and new timbers (ribs), there is little left of the original boat, but she still has her frames and some deadwood structures.

Our first job was to fit a pair of Quarter Knees. Think of the hind quarters of a horse or cow, and you can understand the nomenclature and siting of these knees (brackets).

After making a plywood template for the required shape, wooden blocks (cleats) are bolted to a worktop, and the laminates are coated with glue, and then clamped in place for 24 hours.

To fix the knee in place, pilot holes were drilled, and thick copper nails driven through. We used three 6 inch nails from stock, but needed some longer ones as well, so I made three longer nails from 6mm copper rod. Domed copper washes are then driven down over the nail, and excess material is cut off the protruding nail, which is then ‘peined’ over the washer, creating a rivet-like fixing.

If knees aren’t what you’d think them to be, then floors are still less so. You don’t stand on the floors of a boat, you stand on the deck. The floors are strong structural timbers that lie across the bottom part of the boat, to which the planks are screwed.

Due to the movement of the shape of the boat in its restoration from a very dilapidated state, the floors and frames are no longer fitting properly. The gaps under ‘my’ floor were up to 10mm in size. In addition, the Limber Holes, that allow big water to flow along the boat and not collect in pockets, were too wide. By scribing a line parallel to the inside of the hull, the floor was re-shaped, and Graving Pieces were fitted to reduce the size of the limber holes, so that there was sufficient wood to take a screw through the plank below.

Having got a good fit, I drilled a hole through the frame and keel, and made a bolt out of 1/2 inch silicon-bronze rod (using a die to make a thread for the first time in over 40 yrs!).

These were two projects that were veery challenging at times, but equally satisfying to complete. I have gained lots of useful experience in various techniques: laminating, fitting to complex bevels, making copper nails, roving copper nails, scribing wood to fit curves, making bolts, drilling 8 inch holes accurately ….

In the last few days, I have started working on another boat: Tom Sherrin – a Poole Pilot Launch. This is another long-term restoration project. I have been tasked to undertake a repair on her keel.

A new arrival

Just as we seem to have completed our lofting drawing, Bob gives us some more to add, shifting the finishing line once again! But, it’s all good experience, and emphasises his point that from these outlines, the components can be made exactly to size for the boat building proper. And this is not just for the hull: the deck beams, the bulkheads, the positions of any engine bed, even the bunks and cupboards inside … all these can be taken from the lofting drawing.

But how can these lines be transferred onto a piece of wood? Well, there’s more than one way to skin this particular (ships) cat, but we used the good old ‘nail head’ method. Nails are laid perpendicular to the lines to be ‘lifted,’ their heads pressed into the line with a tap of a hammer. Then, a board is carefully laid on top, and pressed and hammered down. When the board is then lifted off, it has the indents of the tops of the nail heads. Beautifully simple, and a technique that goes back hundreds of years or more.

One the keel is ‘laid’, these frames are fixed on top of the keel, and everything held together, ready for the planking to begin.

We have also done another type of lifting, our first experience of lifting a boat out of the boathouse’s dock for it to go on its trailer. Great fun.

It’s about time that I said a bit about Boathouse 4 and its history, and about the Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust and its links with IBTC Portsmouth.

Boathouse 4 is the last boathouse built for the Royal Navy.  It was constructed between 1938 – 40 – the only boathouse to be built in a home dockyard during the rapid rearmament period of the 1930s.

The building was originally to be built in two phases. The second phase would have extended it to Victory Gate, making it at least twice its current size. It was intended for Phase 1 to be fully operational before Phase 2 commenced, so a temporary corrugated steel wall was erected on the southern side. However, the Second World War broke out before Phase 1 was complete and, as a result, Phase 2 was never built – the temporary wall became permanent, and is still to be seen today. Whether true or not, holes in this corrugated steel wall are said by some to be bullet holes from marauding Messerschmidt fighters.

Boathouse 4 has its own dock, from which boats can be lifted onto the boathouse floor with the gantry cranes, some of which still have their WW2 camouflage. On the other side of the building is a canal with lock gate – the canal continues under the main road of the dockyard to the mast pond, where spars were soaked. With a thin metal sheet wall, and two areas of water open to the harbour and the prevailing winds, it’s no wonder that Boathouse 4 is perishingly cold in the winter. Ah, the joys of the boatbuilder’s life!

In 1941-43 it is believed that the building was involved in the construction of the secret prototype three-man midget submarine X4 and later X-craft developments. King George VI noted in his diaries that he secretly visited the Dockyard to view the X4 project. X-Craft were deployed to neutralise the German battleship Tirpitz in 1943. 

After a major refurbishment of Boathouse 4 in 2014/5 commissioned by the Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust, the IBTC Portsmouth was duly established in 2015 – as an independent registered charity. However, it found itself unable to secure sufficient funding streams to make it viable, and ceased operating in August 2017. Certain assets were sold to Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust, which took over the college.

In 2017, the Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust was granted £2.4m in LIBOR funding by the Chancellor for its Memorial Fleet project. The project’s aim is to create an operational Memorial Fleet of small craft which have played a significant role in the defence of the nation during the 20th century. (LIBOR funding comes from fines levied on the banking industry for manipulating the LIBOR rate, and has being used to support “those that represent the best of values,” in particular military and emergency services charities and other related good causes.)

The Trust’s Memorial Fleet project comprises: the First World War Armed Steam Cutter Falmouth, which served aboard the cruiser HMS Falmouth in 1916 and is one of only two known Jutland survivors to still exist; Foxtrot 8, a landing craft formerly aboard HMS Fearless which took part in the Falklands conflict; High Speed Launch 102 (HSL 102); and the Second World War Motor Gun Boat 81 (MGB 81). There is also a collection of other historic craft, including Cyclops, a 1916 workboat belonging to the World War 1 battleship Royal Sovereign, which is currently being worked upon.

In addition, a replica is currently being built of Coastal Motor Boat 4 (CMB 4) which, under the command of Lt Augustus Agar, sank the Bolshevik cruiser Oleg in 1919. This most extraordinary Thornycroft designed 40 ft torpedo boat is worthy of its own blog post in due course. The only remaining original example of the CMBs is about to be moved to Boathouse 4 from the Imperial War Museum Duxford.

Boathouse 4 is free to visit (there’s only a fee for visiting HMS Warrior, HMS Victory and the Mary Rose Museum). There’s lots to see, and you can see me and the other students at work on the the boathouse floor. There are tours at 1400 daily with a volunteer, and I can also give friends and family a tour of the floor too.

This week was the first of our boatbuilding course proper, having completed our extended joinery course before the late May Bank Holiday. Yet it is hard to let go of our benches in Joinery 1. We feel safe there, after 13 weeks developing hand woodworking skills that were a mystery and a distant goal when we started.

So, with an Instructor off sick, and the remaining instructors trying to juggle all the balls, we spent Monday and Tuesday morning – and other spare moments through the week – at our joinery room benches. Each of us had small projects that kept ourselves gainfully occupied. Two of us made ourselves some ‘winding sticks.’ They can be bought on eBay for £60 – an inordinate price for two straight sticks with some simple inlay!

I was so pleased with them, that I just had to mount them in my toolbox’s lid. So here’s a picture of my ‘finished’ tool chest (parenthesis added because there’s always room for some adjustment or tarting up!).

I have also started making a wooden Dorade box. More joinery, really, but a link with big boat boatbuilding – after all, they were designed for the famous 52 foot racing yacht, Dorade, which was launched in 1930, at a cost of $28,000. A tapered dovetail joint is used for the baffle, which is a new type of dovetail joint for us, so it’s a worthwhile project for that reason alone – even if I do end up using it as yet another box!

We had a lecture on lofting basics on Monday, and on Tuesday afternoon we were let loose on the loft floor – well a few sheets of 8×4 foot plywood, painted white, which we screwed down to the wooden boards below.

We are lofting a 10 foot dinghy using an enlarged set of line drawings from a book. The measurements are laid out in a table of offsets. “There are a few errors in the figures” said Bob, our instructor. Oh, great!

Using a (blue) chalk line, we set out the base line and centre lines for the sheer plan (side view) and the Half Beam Plan (bird’s eye view). Old school geometry came in here for ‘erecting a perpendicular’ from these chalk lines and then drawing out a grid. Using the table of offsets, we plotted out the Base Plan, checking that the lines created are ‘fair.’ No straight lines here, it’s all about fair lines i.e smooth curves that look “right.”

After just three and a half days, we have lofted the boat, all bar plotting a new transom – “just to make it more fun” said Bob. More geometry and brain gymnastics here. It is certainly a steep learning curve, thinking in two dimensions, then three dimensions, and then looking at four planes of perspective. But great fun too – we are so pleased that, unlike the last group who did this as a desk top exercise, we are doing this for real.

The next step (and blog installment) is taking patterns and moulds for frames and components directly from the full-size drawings we have created … this is real boat building!

Friday saw the last day of our slightly extended joinery course. As a nod to the timetabled move from Joinery to Boatbuilding, scheduled for 28th May, we had a couple of lectures: naming boat parts, and interpreting line drawings, but we continued to work in Joinery 1, our second home for the previous 12 weeks. It did mean that most of us completed our Deck Beam exercise, and our stepladders which is quite an achievement. Frustratingly, my third deck beam – the one being marked for City & Guilds – was the worst of the three … rather loose. But it’s done, and I also managed to put some fittings in my tool chest lid on Friday, to accommodate some saws, which was a good note on which to end the week.

This week is an INSET week – i.e. a designated week’s holiday. We headed down to Cornwall, to see James and Steph in Helston for a few days, and we had a super time. We were joined by Tony, Sylvia’s brother, and visited both old and new sights/venues/restaurants: our favourite fishing village of Porthleven, and some beaches that were new to us (Porthadu & Gyllynvase). James took Sylvia, Tony and I on a tour of the base, and this time we had a guided tour of the cockpit of a Merlin from one of the trainee pilots – more switches than you can shake a stick at!

We start on lofting next week. Lofting is the taking of line drawings to full-scale, and then using these to make moulds and components for the build. This process was only superseded by computer CAD drawings in the 1980s. Previously, and traditionally, the only space to draw out the full size of a boat or ship was the loft above the boathouse floor – hence the term ‘lofting.’

This week, I managed to finish my stepladder and, although there were some hurdles, and it is not quite perfect, it looks good and works well – I am pleased with the final result.

I am now moving on to the deck beam exercise, and the angled dovetail, complete with its ‘flair’ is taxing my grey cells. Here’s the start, with mock gunwales set into a jig, and the fist beam, cut and shaped, ready to start the joints.

We have to fit three beams, and the last one is marked for the City & Guilds qualification. Hopefully, I will finish this in the coming four day week – an extension to our 12 week joinery course, which finished on Friday with the awarding of certificates! Because we have got the first week of June off, it has been decided that we will move from joinery to the boathouse itself on 10th June.

The main news and the biggest joy of the week was the safe arrival on Monday of Lily, our second grandchild. Siobhan and David are very proud parents – rightly so. She is a beautiful baby, just as her mother (and no-doubt her maternal grandmother) was. Both she and Siobhan are doing well, and Noah is very pleased with his new baby sister …