Vegan Vikings

Sometimes a reflection upon events that pass under my keel are enough to encourage feelings of accomplishment.

SpoolMasterTM

Years ago I was working for Kalmar Nyckel during a winter maintenance period where we were scheduled to make a pile of new stays and shrouds.  We had a few huge spools of white polyester cable and hawsers that eventually needed to be turned black for good looks and extra ultra violet light protection.  "We could paint them by hand." was one suggestion.

Eventually we decided on running the cables through a half latex paint, half water solution, which works very well absorbing into the cable giving a nice coating.  There was one problem.  How do we effectively dry such an amount of cable without taking up too much space, getting paint everywhere, or dirt on the new cable?

And thus the SpoolMaster5000TM was born.

*images, drwing, of the painting process coming soon

Today I work with the Swedish East India Trading Company ship replica Götheborg.  Here we also have our own unique problems.  We make all of our own rope for rigging the ship.  The material we use to make the rope is hemp, and the material we use to preserve it is pine tar.  One thing is the same, the rope must be coiled.

Please welcome SpoolMaster5000TM-OldschoolEdition to the club.

No glue was harmed during the creation of this SpoolMasterTM.

I promise you, all of the joints didn't fit this neatly.

Slingerbardun

Chafe - Skav

On the old strop - På den gammal stroppen

So I shall splice up a new one - Så jag ska splitsa upp en ny

Worm, parcel, and serve - Tira, smärta, och kläda

Should We Parcel Our Rig?

Has been some question to parcel or not to parcel.  One thought is that parceling will hold in the moisture, cause rot, and thus be not worth the time and energy to clap it on. 

I have seen the description of worming and parceling in some salty old books and technical descriptions of rigging from the days of tarry hemp rigs.  See: "The Elements and practice of Rigging And Seamanship"  Should we parcel just because someone took the time to typeset during the early days of the printing press? 

When I first started sailing the Eastindiaman Gothenburg, the rigging was quite new.  Some rigging had been paceled, some not.  Now as she has been sailing for around a decade, I am able to get a feel for where rigging is showing signs of aging, or where it fails.

Here is a piece of rigging that has been wormed, parceled, served, and tarred between all of those steps.

Hemp stretches slowly over time, and service that is laid on can aquire a small gap inbetween each turn.  Here one can see the parceling doing its job.  It is holding in the tar, and in the small gaps of the service the tar has built up on top.  Under the service the hemp is in very nice condition.  The yarns are all clearly visible, have a nice tarry brown color, are free of rot, and unscathed.

Bumkin Outhaul / Fockhalsdävert Uthal

Clapping on service / Klädning

vessels i've captained...