Fid

n. a tapered implement, made of wood, iron, bone, or other dense workable material, used to aid in splicing by separating strands of a rope.

In February of this year I had the pleasure of visiting Her Majesty's Historic Shipyard in Portsmouth, United Kingdom. With two historic ships amazingly intact, and half of a preserved hull from a sixteenth century warship, the Mary Rose, this piece of history is one of a kind, and definitely well worth the visit for me. I only wish I could have spent weeks there researching those vessels.

After inspection of the HMS Victory via a guided tour, I got to talking to Ben, the officer on duty for the day. He was very enthusiastic about the ship and eager to chat with me about her, two traits I really appreciated. I can not recall how long we were engaged in conversation. As we discussed rigging and the hull, our chats led us into a rigging workshop that is due to be demolished to make way for the new Mary Rose museum. Ben handed me a piece of copper sheeting removed from the hull as he told me about some of the various methods of preservation and maintenance, like the removal of most of the copper sheeting since the ship will most likely never touch water again, and told me to keep it. I was also graciously gifted a trunnel from the upper deck replacement and quite a large shiver of a deck beam. The people at the airport didn't seem to like my gifts as much as I did. Even though "Piece of oak" is not listed in the dangerous, do not carry on and airplane list.

Upon returning to Sweden, and after proudly showing off my cool new souvenirs, I had decided to turn the unusable hunk of history into a nice, salty, usable tool; a fid. I knew immediately that I did not want any sort of modern implement to come anywhere near my 250 year old relic, so I climbed aboard the East Indiaman and went straight for the carpenter. One of the coolest tools on board was the smithed draw knife, which was just about perfect for the job I was about to accomplish. I worked the oak into a nice shape relrelatively quickly. After completely to my liking I massaged in a couple coats of linseed oil to give it some traditional protection, not to mention a beautiful almond color.

The piece of oak was large enough to wield a nice wide 14" fid, a perfect complement to my ditty bag. I can not wait to put it to use! There is definitely some hardcore tallship street-cred to have not only a hand carved oak fid, but a relic in the ditty bag. The spirit of Nelson himself is in that fid!