Here is our replica bronze age boat in the courtyard of Borlougne castle. Read about the building of it
here Our job now was just two of us had to get it inside the medieval building behind.
We had been told it wouldn't fit and we would have to dismantle it and rebuild it inside, it looked to us like it would just go so we set to work with ropes and levers, it's amazing what you can do with a lever applied in just the right way.
Heading for the doorway
lining up
and now we switch to an old block and tackle to pull with
in she comes, straight up the steps.
Now we have to spin her round and up those steps and through the door to the right.
just enough room
what a magnificent space, imagine what this must have felt like in the 13th C, shame it's a newish roof.
two men taking their time with skill and a few hours and we were inside.
The next step was to remove the synthetic stitches and replace them with twisted willow withies, you can twist them up by hand to separate the fibres and they become like a rope but with 200 to do I worked out a way of doing it with an electric drill.
and here are the finished stitches.
this shows a stitch just before it is pulled tight, the stitch to the left is synthetic.
There were various bits of hewing to finish and tidy with the bronze adzes too, everything had been such a mad rush at the end of the build.
We popped out one day to see this gang filming in the courtyard, they gave us some amazing cheese too.
back to work, carving a pile of half scale paddles, just like big spoons really.
and here is the finished boat
I am so proud of it, it would be great to go over and see the bronze age exhibition with all the gold stuff from the British museum, it's meant to be fantastic.
7 comments:
Where there's a will, there's a way, I always heard!
Great stuff Robin, it really does look well.
I sometimes have to move impossibly heavy logs, I find using round wood for rollers good, you can swivel them easily to alter the course of travel. I picked this up from my Dad's building business when they used to use rollers (scaffolding putlocks actually) for moving anything from stone lintels to site cabins.
Fantastic boat.
Totally beautiful Robin, a tribute to great teamwork.
A friend and I moved all the timbers for a log cabin across his garden and then up onto the walls using levers, rollers and block & tackle. It's great to do heavy work with simple tackle.
Brilliant project, thanks for all the posts along the way.
Ahhhhh, appropriate technology soothes the soul.
Yes a skilled man with a lever and a few rollers can move pretty well anything. At one time I had to lift the boat up on my own, I had a lever under the boat and a second lever lifting the handle of the first lever, lots of mechanical advantage and I could lift it easily. When I was younger I used my back more and brain less.
that is really neat! Also, I really like the name of your blog.
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