We have reached the half way point of my course in Boathouse 4. The year is going so fast. I wonder if there is time enough left to complete the process of putting my final years of Practice life behind me. I realise now that this is part of the reason for doing the course, even if it was not the original intent. Legal and financial strings, though flimsy, still bind me to the Willow Group – something highlighted only this week!

We have travelled today to ‘God’s own country’ – Yorkshire – and are staying in a stone cottage, just north of York, for a welcome week’s break.

It is just after 5, and I am sitting in the pocket hankerchief of a garden, that adjoins the cottage, taking in our suuroundings. A soft breeze barely tempers the heat of the sun, and the air is filled with birdsong and the buzz of bees. House Martins and the occasional swallow swoop overhead, and several different butterflies dance around me. A cock pheasant runs across the nearby field, as a pigeon swoops up, clapping its wings before gliding on.

As the shadows lengthen, the birds in the holly hedge sing even louder and sweeter, and I wish that I could identify them from the trills and tweets they are making.

The sound of the bees buzzing around the lavender, reminds me of Yeats’ poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43281/the-lake-isle-of-innisfree): ‘I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, …

In medieval times, rest was a healthy ‘activity’, whereas frantic work or listless idleness were taken as a sign of not being at peace with oneself. I can certainly identify with the former!

Brook cottage is certainly a lovely peaceful place to spend a week away, together. As the Welsh would say ‘Ile i’r enaid ddod o hyd i heddwch:’ a place for the soul to find peace.

Ahhh … tools! Can you ever have too many? I have been very fortunate to have inherited tools from my Dad, and to have been given tools by one of my patients, who was the Foreman in the joinery team at a local large boatbuilding firm, Camper and Nicholson. With birthday, Christmas and retirement presents, I should have been fully equipped, but it’s strange how strong the draw is to extend ones armamentarium!

I have mainly sourced additional tools from eBay, and the vintage tool stall at Winchester Market (on the first Sunday of the month). I bought a couple of items in an on-line auction a few months ago – it would be great to attend one of the David Stanley auctions some time. I have also bought from Tooltique – an on-line vintage tool dealer, who refurbishes and sharpens their tools really well, and prices them very fairly. On eBay, it’s fun to find and bid for good examples of vintage planes etc, especially now that I know the market fairly well, but it’s getting harder to justify buying additional planes now!

One of our group picks up treasures from car boot sales for next to nothing, but a recent visit to our local car boot sale was very disappointing.

Fellow students have recommended Leeside Tools as a place to get good second hand tools, but with my Saturday mornings usually taken up with DOLS (Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards) medical assessments, I have not got around to paying them a visit – until yesterday, that is. I was prompted after one of our gang of four bought a superb Stanley No. 7 plane there for a remarkably good price.

The shop is made up of four or five extensions and rooms, so it is only as one ventures deeper into these areas that the enormity of their stock becomes clear. Wow, what an Aladdin’s cave!

As well as a wide range of new and vintage tools, the owner, David, has created a small museum, full to bursting with his collection of planes, plumb bobs, brace and bits, and more.

Anyway, I didn’t find it difficult to find a few items I ‘needed,’ including some ‘pig-sticker’ mortise chisels, an I Sorby No.6 gouge, a Stanley No.80 cabinet scraper, and a 2″ chisel.

While there, a chap came in. “I need some tools from this list,” he said, brandishing a piece of paper I immediately recognised as the tool list for IBTC Portsmouth. And so it was, that I was able to give some – hopefully helpful – advice to one of the students due to start the joinery course in two weeks time. “Take a look at Tooltique.co.uk for your saws,” I told him, hoping David wouldn’t mind – well I had advised on his purchase of a Stanley No.4, boxed, for just £28, a reasonable starter block plane, a £6 vintage coping saw, and some chisels, including a nice I Sorby 1/2″. In fact, I rather enjoyed helping him spend HIS money!

A LITTLE ASIDE FROM BOATBUILDING:

I am no longer a regular GP, but I have witnessed and experienced the strain on NHS services and workers from the perspective of General Practice, which has been particularly hit by the reduced funding under the recent period of austerity. So, perhaps more than most, I maintain a close interest in the NHS, and was interested to hear the recent announcement from our new Prime Minister, of an extra £1.8 billion for the NHS. This announcement bears close scrutiny.

The headline figures are an extra £1.8 billion over the next five years, including £1billion for the coming year.

The 2018/19 NHS England budget was £115 billion, so an extra £1 billion for this year is only an additional 0.86%.

THE BACKGROUND:

Accounting for inflation, NHS spending has historically grown at an average annual rate of about 3.7% from 1950/51. However, the average growth between 2009/10 and 2014/15 under the Coalition government was 1.1% and from then to 2016/17 under the Conservative government was 2.3%.

Last year the government announced that an additional £20.5 billion in real terms will be made available for the NHS in England by 2023/24. When it was announced, this meant an average increase on the NHS’s budget of around 3.4% a year (i.e. nearly back to average annual increases). However, with inflation over the next few years set to be higher than expected, the actual real terms increase will be less than 3.4%.

At the time, health experts said that this money will “help stem further decline in the health service, but it’s simply not enough to address the fundamental challenges facing the NHS, or fund essential improvements to services that are flagging.” In January 2019 the National Audit Office said: “There is a risk that the NHS will be unable to use the extra funding optimally because of staff shortages.”

Across the country, many NHS trusts are in deficit, because they are spending more than they’re bringing in.

The NHS was also asked several years ago to find £22 billion in savings by 2020, in order to keep up with rising demand and an ageing population. So, the Government is promising nearly the same amount of increased spending over five years as the amount of savings asked of the NHS for the same period!

IS THIS £1.8 BILLION NEW MONEY?

The Nuffield Trust has said that this money isn’t new. It says the £1 billion added to the NHS capital budget was actually “cash hospitals and other NHS trusts already have, but have been forbidden to spend. They earned it last [year] in incentive payments for cutting their costs”.

But this money couldn’t be spent on the day-to-day running of hospitals, so it had to be spent on capital projects instead: things like IT, equipment or new hospitals. Ironically, with a total spending limit placed on capital spending, trusts found they weren’t going to be allowed spend all the incentive scheme money once they had it.

The Health Foundation says that “As a result of these spending limits NHS trusts were asked to reduce their capital spending plans by 20% … This meant that some trusts had money available to them which they were being asked not to spend.” This 20% reduction has now been reversed with the announcement of money for the NHS.

As the Health Foundation puts it, from the perspective of NHS trusts, this is “money they’d already thought they could spend”. But the Health Foundation also says that from the Treasury’s perspective it’s correct that this is ‘new money’—as it’s an extra £1 billion of spending this year that it hadn’t planned for previously.

The Nuffield Trust had the same view. It says that it “will feel like a new spending commitment for the Treasury. That is because it will no longer be able to recycle NHS trust cash stored in government coffers to fund other bits of government funding, and the total amount of money going out will therefore increase. However Mr Hancock was wrong to claim this was ‘new money’ to the NHS. From the point of view of trusts it is not.”

TO CONCLUDE:

NHS spending in the past decade has increased annually much less (about 60-70% less) than the average annual increase since its foundation.

The latest announcement is for a 0.8% annual increase for this year – hardly likely to reduce the approx 40% of trusts in deficit!

The Treasury will be spending more than it expected on the NHS, but NHS Trusts will be accessing money that they had already earned (but told not to spend).

We have learnt not to expect our representatives in Government to be straight with the voters, and tell us how it really is. The NHS remains a political football, when what is needed is a cross-party consensus, long-term planning and public agreement over what should and should not be funded.

Silly anachronisms continue. For example, a well-off patient with an under-active thyroid, has ALL their NHS prescriptions free, not just their thyroid replacement tablets. Conversely, someone who is struggling to make ends meet, but not in receipt of key benefits, may be paying for three or more items for their chronic eczema/ asthma/hypertension …

The NHS is a ‘holy cow.’ Politicians can play smoke and mirrors with funding pledges and announcements, but short-termism, and fear of upsetting patient groups, means that nothing really changes.

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!