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.

Natural Fiber

n. derived from plants or animals.

I am just graced with the awareness that 2009 is the International Year of Natural Fibers! To me this is pretty exciting. I have become a pretty strong advocate to the use of clean, well grown, natural fibers, over their polluting, carbon dioxide expelling opposites.

I imagine that probably all of you who are reading this have at least some plastic in your wardrobe. Most shoes contain a form of plastic. Materials like Polyester, Polypropylene, Nylon, Gore-Tex, etc., are are synthetics found in every-day clothing. Do you use paper towels, wet napkins, feminine hygiene products, diapers, or anything else disposable? Check closely, these items may be plastic or part plastic, and are probably at least packaged in plastic.

What is our obsession with plastic!?

There are many ways we can help nurture the environment, as well as our own lives and health; switch to natural fibers as much as possible. If you want to help, check the labels the next time you are to buy a new shirt, pants, socks, underwear, and shoes. Use wool garments instead of fleece to keep you dry when wet, hemp, flax, or cotton canvas for heavy working pants, cotton undershirts, and silk for that new bra or sexy chemise. Get dirty. Check the items you by everyday and replace those paper towels and Swiffer products with rags. Think about what is disposable, where it is going, and what impact it has on the environment. What plants are being used, how are they farmed, and is it sustainable?

So many boats out there are plastic on plastic. Plastic sails in the form of Dacron, Polyester, and Polypropelene, and many others, plastic running rigging and other small stuff like sail ties that just blow away into the sea. Why not use natural rope and sails again? On the East Indiaman Gothenburg we have been reproving that flax and hemp is an excellent material for sail making ever since 2005. Our rigging is made of hemp rope, super durable, and extremely UV resistant. We use linseed oil on our wood for preservation.

It seems as if some synthetics last longer than natural fibers. If you are unwilling to swap out to natural for everything, try just the small things. That small stuff, the stops used to furl your sails, the ones that often blow overboard and get lost to davy jones, go natural. Sail covers are just to protect your sail from the UV damage, why not a sexy hand stitched hemp, flax, or cotton cover? What about your colors? Most likely Nylon, go cotton. Like all natural fibers, dry and store them properly and it's no problem.

I appreciate every little thing you may do when going to natural fibers. Thank you.

Yarn

Definition: One of the threads of which a rope is composed.

Not too much has happened with me this weekend by way of ships. Malin and I took a bone-chilling bike ride into Stenungsund for some relaxing reading in the semi-comfortable couches of Espresso House, which look out over the empty marina and a nice Swedish archipelago background. But mostly I have simply been relaxing with Malin and her family at home, having fika, watching Let's Dance and the Melodifestivalen. The latter two I am not so entirely proud of so let's move on shall we?

As far as my hobby and passion, I spliced and served up some cringles on my rig bag. The only difficulty in this was that I didn't necessarily have what one would call rope. What I did have were various lengths of short hemp yarns and fibers that have been salvaged from their unfortunate fate of the trash cans at the shipyard. I first spun up some three strands with two yarns in each, then for the fun of it I laid them into a short rope. That was my actual first experience with laying up a rope completely by hand. I have made rope before with various rope making tools. I look forward to, hopefully very soon, when we will lay up the new rigging for the East Indiaman. As for the bag cringles, I had split the short rope back into three strands and laid them up through the stitched eyes and into cringles, and served them with some leftover yarns. The bag is coming along nicely. Since my tool collection is now acceptable for the moment, I will stitch in some pockets along the inside to fit them. I plan on splicing up a nice lanyard and a cringle to receive it on the bottom bolt rope for throwing it over my shoulder when it isn't to be hoisted up to me.

Is this an acceptable amount of description? Should I go into further detail on the how it's done side of things? Is it too much?