Wood, felt, lead, nuts and bolts
October 2022 - October 2023
The pause
Our funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund came to an end with the close of 2022. The first three months of 2023 were spent preparaing a bid for work to continue, and the second three months waiting for a decision. With success, work resumed in June 2023 … with the tough task of fixing the planking underneath Raybel.
Bottom planking at the bow
Resuming on site, Tim and John began working in the gloomy depths of the four feet space beneath the barge, on the bottom planking. First the bow bottom timbers needed replacing. These timbers need a tight turn up and around the bow so have to twist in two directions – a “compound turn” in shipwrighting parlance.
Only a few timbers can cope with the stresses – and the brittle opepe used for the sides is not right for the job. Elm can take tight curves. In the 1970’s tall elm trees were common in the English landscape but when Dutch elm disease ravaged the population it became a rare sight. Though little is now available, we were able to locate some through Eastbourne Parks department, which had needed to fell some elm trees. Wide boards, 24 inches wide, inch and a half thick, and as long as we could get. A beautiful brown colour with a strong, clear grain pattern and heavy as heck. Elm also has a distinctive smell when machined – exactly the same as fireworks - and that’s a good way to identify it.
Each plank was spiled onto a plywood panel. The measurements were laid off onto the timber, which was then cut with a circular saw. Edges planed to the right bevel. Then the plank had to be lowered down the side of the barge where it would be plastered with felt adhesive, a layer of felt, then a layer of roofing mastic. The whole heavy messy lot had to be lifted up to the bows and held tight against the next plank with props and jacks long enough to get a fixing in – either a traditional boat spike or a galvanised coach screw. An ideal job for six people but generally only two of them on site. Then the whole plank would be fixed along its length. A coat of grey primer finished the job.
Chine timbers
Next the chine edge timbers needed replacing. More Opepe wood was fitted along the bottom edges of the barge - all overhead work with no standing room. Only one problem. The barge is sitting on blocks – piles of timber 4 feet high, 4 feet wide and 15 inches thick. To fit timber to the bottom each block in turn has to be replaced with a removeable acrow-prop while the work is done. Then the bolts can be replaced, and the blocks rebuilt. In the meantime, the acrow-prop is replaced with a vertical stand of 2 x 4 inch hardwood timber. It looks very precarious, but the shipwrights assure us they have never had a barge fall over!
Roger’s nailed it
Whilst this specialist work was going on, the volunteers were gamely taking on two time consuming tasks. Back at the start of the year, Roger and Kev worked up top, rolling out lead flashing, bending it carefully, measuring out nail holes and bedding it onto mastic to make a durable, flexible waterproof seal between the coamings (the sides of the hatches) and the deck. It’s tempting to just bash in a lot of nails and that’s how most barges are done, but on Raybel the flashings are works of art, carefully cut and shaped and nailed at regular intervals.
The bolt champions
Then there were the bolts. Lots of them. Barges are fixed together with bolts. At the edges (or chines) there are vertical bolts from underneath into the chine timber, and horizontal bolts from the sides to the chine timber. Down the centre line of the barge slightly sloping bolts go from the keel up into both sides of the steel joist which is the keelson. These are hefty bolts nearly an inch thick and up to 3 feet long.
But over the last 100 years Raybel’s bolts have corroded in the middle, making them thinner and weaker. Getting the old ones out is a nightmarish job with each taking from 30 minutes to 3 days to remove. If you pull them, they may break leaving half in the hole. If you bash them, they can break with the top half overlapping the bottom half and wedging itself firmly in. Jim, Ken, Alan and Bryan set about the task.
Each bolt – about 180 in all - needed its own special technique to get out, but eventually a regular system was perfected. The nut was dug out from its concrete cap with a hammer and chisel and taken off with a spanner. The bolt was then hammered down with a long piece of rod called a drift. The bolt would often move only 1 mm for each blow of a 10-pound hammer. If it didn’t cooperate the team moved under the barge and welded a piece of threaded 20mm bar onto the bolt head. A crossbar of heavy angle iron could then be slipped onto the threaded bar and 2 x 4 tonne hydraulic jacks used to pull out the bolt by jacking against the underside of the barge. Walkie talkies were used for communication for those below and above.
This sounds easier than it is. Swinging a ten-pound hammer is not for wimps. Holding a drift while somebody swings a hammer at it is not for the faint hearted. And If the bolt or the weld snapped the whole lot fell into the dry dock floor. Better jump quick! Add to that a hundred climbs up and down the ladder carrying welders, grinders, jacks, and lights made it an exhausting job. The team worked on the bolts for over 40 working days before getting the last ones out in late October.A truly epic task, deserving huge congratulations.
Thanks Tim!
After three years on the project, shipwright Tim Goldsack leaves us at the end of October, to fulfil a promise made to Sailing Barge Hydrogen. We wish him well and offer thanks for his stewardship of the project so far. An amazing journey we have had!
His last task was to carve a new name badge on the port side, to match the one done a year ago on the starboard. Smart and stylish, it’s a marker of all the pride felt in bringing Raybel so close to full restoration now.
