casting bronze axes and adzes

Now I have been working with bronze axes and adzes every day for 2 months and have answered many questions about how to set up the edges and haft them efficiently. There are lots more questions I would love to explore but shall not have the time about the metallurgy of bronze. We did get into this a little when Time Team came filming our project again. Phil Harding inspecting our handiwork. Phil is a great guy, we used to do the craft fairs together me doing turning him flint knapping many years ago before his Time Team work took off. His day job is still as a working archaeologist though.

This is Neil Burridge with his little mobile furnace for casting bronze and our apprentice Rachel on the bellows.

 Casting was quite like us steaming boat timbers a couple of hours holding everything at a set temperature  with building excitement followed by a few seconds frantic work.

 The clay moulds are pre heated in a charcoal kiln then stood up on a bed of sand.

 all ready

 and here comes the bronze

 Some folk let the bronze cool naturally particularly if sand casting. Neil drops his into water and thinks this may give the tool more ductility. I would be very interested to know what the effects of heat treatment quenching vs slow cooling are on the grain structure of bronze to see if the science can contribute to the art. This is the moment of truth as Phil opens up the mould to reveal the tool. I am afraid I don't seem to have photographed it up close, as soon as they had it out it was my turn on camera experimenting with it alongside one of Phil's flint tools.

 The Time Team special on boatbuilding in the bronze age will probably go out in the Autumn.

Here is an index for all blog posts on the Dover boat project

bronze-age-woodworking-adzes-and-axes
more-bronze-age-woodworking
bronze-age-boat-building-pictures
bronze-age-boatbuilding-part-2
bronze-age-boatbuilding-part-3
bronze-age-boatbuilding-part-4
bronze-age-boatbuilding-part-5
bronze-age-woodworking-tools-early thoughts
building-bronze-age-dover-boat-part-6
building-bronze-age-dover-boat-part-7
boat-building-steaming-timbers
filming-with-time-team
more-bronze-age-boatbuilding.
casting-bronze-axes-and-adzes
more-bronze-age-boatbuilding.
20-hour-woodworking-marathon
woodworking-marathon-continued-just 18 hours to go.
dover-boat-launch-day-end-of-3-months work.
the boat-that-didnt-float.

more bronze age woodworing

Another update on the progress of the bronze age Dover boat. Ancient woodworking specialist Damian Goodburn visited last week and declared this the most complex example of prehistoric woodworking ever reconstructed. Well there is a lot of headscratching and thinking involved and I have to say my understanding of the bronze age has been transformed. The Dover boat is very complex, even our half scale replica is a big boat requiring major team effort for several months, the full scale being twice as long, twice as wide and twice as thick would be 8 times as heavy so where each of our main timbers can be lifted by 3 people when fully thinned down the original would have needed 24 people. There is a whole lot of putting the boat together and offering timbers up, scribing the lines where they fit then taking apart again, time consuming and hard work but with 24 people per timber it becomes a huge undertaking.
The only previous attempt at this sort of work was the reconstruction of the Ferriby boat the team I am working with carved the timbers for that reconstruction but it was put together by modern shipwrights Geoff Bird. Geoff came down to see our work in progress and shared these photos of the Ferriby.

 This is Geoff showing Richard how they did the stitching, the originals were stitched with yew withies, for the sea trials we will be using modern lashings as they did on Ferriby but we will also experiment with some yew withies. This is tightening the stitch with a Spanish windlass type contraption, it generates huge pressure.

 Finishes trial stitch held in place with oak wedge ready to be cut off.

 Now a couple of photos to show the boat as it appears when we put it all together.

 Here you can see the joint between bottom and side timbers, not bad for rough carving with bronze tools. The next stage is to scribe the line and then cut a rebate in the base timber that the side timber sits into.

 This angle shows the shape of the boat nicely.

 Marking the line to cut the rebate.

 and whilst it's all together we also mocked up the front end, the two sheets of ply act as winding sticks and help us sight through to ensure we cut a clean edge at the front in a single plane, this will help a lot when we come to fit the front section board in there. That is a rather three dimensional piece which was impossible to draw from the plans because we did not know how far up and in the other timbers would move with steaming. Now they are in position we are able to take measurements across to a waiting tree and my last job last week was roughing out that piece. I finished late though and forgot to take pictures.

HRH The Prince of Wales endorses craft.

Things have been so busy the last few weeks I have not had time to post about the Heritage Crafts Associations spring conference to which our President The Prince of Wales sent a marvelous message copied below.

We also had the great pleasure of having our new patron Emma Bridgewater speak with passion about the Stoke Pottery industry. You can watch the whole talk here, 45minutes and takes a few mins to get going but I think worth it. If you would rather just the core message below is Emma doing a 2 minute version on Newsnight.

boat 1550BC progress

The beauty of building a replica of the Bronze Age boat in Dover is that we are just 100 yards away from the 3,500 year old original. Whilst it has been studied and drawn in great detail there is no way every detail can be recorded but we can go and check fine details on the original boat as we are working. The boat is kept in temperature and humidity controlled environment so being allowed in close like this is a very special experience. It's difficult to put into words what it feels like being in there with the oldest sea going boat in the world.

 

Whilst inside I took plenty of photos of details here are a few just to show what woodworking was like 3,500 years ago. This shows the base of the boat made of 4 wide planks two central planks are held together by wooden wedges and the curved side planks are stitched on with twisted yew withies.

 

close up of the wedges holding the central seem together.

and a close up of a stitch.

 

The top plank had been salvaged before the boat was abandoned, to do this they had to cut through the yew stitches and measuring the length of the protruding stitch gives us an indication of the joint and the distance to the stitch hole in the missing upper plank.

Here is Trevor cutting the joint between the two central base planks. In the original this seat was packed with moss and a lathe driven home tight over the top. The moss would expand as it got wet until it sealed. Because our replica is half scale and the lathe seat half as thick we don't think that it will be possible to waterproof it with moss and for the sea trials we will use mastic then replace with moss when it goes on display in the museums.

This shows the four bottom planks, there is much debate about how such complex boats evolved, they are so very different to the dugouts of the time and there is no parallel anywhere else in Europe. One theory is that they developed from the dugout canoe tradition. Bronze age and neolithic dugouts are surprisingly common finds no less than six have been found on a single site currently being excavated at Must Farm

Some dugouts split and are repaired with laths and stitching, the theory goes that its not a huge step from there to cutting a dugout down the middle and putting an extra bit in to make it bigger, hmmmm.

Anyway back to our boat, the next step is to get the upper planks ready, this needs us to assemble the boat and scribe the top line and transfer that line onto the rough hewn planks. Plywood makes this easy, wonder how they did it originally.

 

Here are our templates cut out and finding the best fit on the rough hewn planks.

 Then it's time to cheat and rough it out with a chainsaw. We could hew all this away with bronze axes but it wouldn't prove much and we are running behind time with a tight deadline, all the finishing will be done with bronze tools.

 Roughed out top planks ready fro steaming.

Here is an index for all blog posts on the Dover boat project

bronze-age-woodworking-adzes-and-axes
more-bronze-age-woodworking
bronze-age-boat-building-pictures
bronze-age-boatbuilding-part-2
bronze-age-boatbuilding-part-3
bronze-age-boatbuilding-part-4
bronze-age-boatbuilding-part-5
bronze-age-woodworking-tools-early thoughts
building-bronze-age-dover-boat-part-6
building-bronze-age-dover-boat-part-7
boat-building-steaming-timbers
filming-with-time-team
more-bronze-age-boatbuilding.
casting-bronze-axes-and-adzes
more-bronze-age-boatbuilding.
20-hour-woodworking-marathon
woodworking-marathon-continued-just 18 hours to go.
dover-boat-launch-day-end-of-3-months work.
the boat-that-didnt-float.

mindboggling woodworking video

 What can I say? just watched this and am blown away. "When I am working I am fully focused"

new spooncarving and knifemaking courses

One of the highlights of last year for me was Fritiof Runhall coming to Edale to teach two carving courses. He was such a fun and inspiring teacher. Part of the fun was that the course participants varied from beginners to some of the best carvers in the country and we were all learning together. This is what Steve Tomlin said on his blog
"I arrived expecting to be inspired by beautiful craftsmanship and to spend a few days enjoying carving spoons in good company but what I hadn’t expected was to learn so much from Fritiof and his spoons. Right from the start there were new ideas and techniques that surprised, impressed and inspired me. It was very interesting just to watch him work, spot similarities in our techniques and try to emulate and learn from the differences."
Well the big news is Fritiof is coming back to teach just one course this year and there are as I write just 7 places available, last year 16 places filled pretty quick so get in quick if you want a place. Booking dates and details here 
And the other new course is really put on for my own benefit and we will see if anyone else wants to join me. 20 years ago I watched a video called Caesars Bark Canoe, it was truly inspirational. I fell in love with the vessel and with the tool used to make it, the crooked knife or mocotaugan. It just seemed so simple and yet effective. It worked like a drawknife but without the need for a shave horse and could carve shallow hollows too. Having spent a lot of time forging my own tools over the years I am aware how subtle the difference between a tool that sort of works OK and one that is tuned to fit by someone who really knows what they are doing. So I am delighted that canoe builder, spooncarver, snowshoe maker and all round superb woodworker Jarrod StoneDahl is coming to Edale to teach us how to make the perfect mocotaugan. The cost of £255 will include all materials for you to make and tune a crooked knife to take home. Here are some of Jarrod's crooked knives.

t

Teaching at North House Folk School.

and paddling his gorgeous bark canoe.

and just in case you hadn't noticed these two courses are either side of SPOONFEST so for an extra couple of days and £40 you could have a simply fantastic week.

SPOONFEST

SPOONFEST is a gathering of everyone interested in spooncarving for a weekends fun, sharing and inspiration. It started out as a sort of pipe dream of getting all our favourite carvers together to talk spoons and carve together, it seems to have taken off into a genuine international event with carvers, collectors, beginners and fellow obsessives from Sweden, USA, Holland and the UK coming so far. Most of the big names of the green woodworking world will be there from Jogge Sundqvist and Mike Abbott to Fritiof Runhall and JanHarm ter Brugge. There will be a gallery with Norman Steven's incredible collection of spoons shown for the first time outside the USA along with historical spoons and an instant gallery of spoons made by spoonfest attendees. There has never been an event where so many talented spooncarvers have come together and we are really looking forward to it. Ticket prices are cheap at just £40 for the weekend including free camping on site. Tickets are more than half sold out already so if you want to make sure you are at this inspirational event book soon. Full details at the spoonfest site here

If you do facebook you can join the spoonfest group here 

filming with Time Team

The Dover boat reconstruction I have been working on and blogging about over the last 8 weeks is pretty special and so we get lots of film crews around. The best record will be a Time Team special on the bronze age and particularly bronze age boatbuilding. It is as always fascinating to see the team work and crafting a TV program is not dissimilar perhaps to crafting a boat. They have a big picture of where they are going with various stages that can be planned and have to be done at certain times but also they never really know just where the good footage will be and so are continually responding to the material, just as we are with our material. Anyway this is Richard starting to split a big oak log for the cameras, it was a gnarly second length and was hard work, would have been easy enough with time but when the cameras are running in your face everything gets much harder work and however much you try it's impossible just to carry on as if they are not there.

This is a different crew interviewing Kieth the archaeologist who discovered the bronze age boat, he popped out on his lunch break to check the construction site for the A20 and an underpass and 6m down in the peat there was what he instantly recognised as a boat timber, the mechanical excavator had already taken one huge bite out of it so he was just in time. Construction stopped for the day and they ended up with 7 days to excavate and recover it.

 This was the official press launch of the building project, we have 5 French film crews on site but only local BBC from the UK, our PR department are clearly not as good as the French partners.

This is Richard our team leader clearly relieved at the end of the day filming steaming a timber with Time Team

The real eye opener though was the day Tony Robinson came to film. They had to pack so much into the day and worked really hard. I am used to working with film crews where if they don,t like something you do it again and if they like it then it's wrapped up and we move on. With Time Team it was the other way round, one of the first things we filmed was Richard and I splitting a big oak log with Tony trying to help here and there. They really liked the take so we had to do it exactly the same again 3 more times so they could film from different angles to cut it together. I had no idea where I had been standing, where I moved, what I said but it all had to be repeated. Tony was a past master at it and helped us out when we forgot, by the end of the day we had got the hang of it but it was pretty strange. Anyway here is Trevor with Tony explaining all about how the cleats work.

Graham who is filming/directing is a wondeful guy who's first film was a documentary of a 4 month canoe trip on the MacKenzie River finishing in the Arctic. He later went back to live with and document the life of the Inuit there and is full of incredible stories. One of his more recent programs was the BBCs Around the World in 80 Faiths.

 

 and just to show how draining filming days can be, someone snapped me at the end of the press day flaked out.

boat building steaming timbers

So our Dover Bronze Age boat project has got to the stage for steaming the planks. These are heavy oak timbers 20 feet long an inch and a half thick and the first ones we need to bend are also curved cross section so thus increasing their rigidity and acting like a girder.

The principle of bending wood is you have to get it up to a high temperature at which point the glues that hold the fibres together melt allowing the fibres to slide over each other. As it cools the fibres set in their new position. It takes a long time to heat up and a short time to cool down so there are several hours of anticipation followed by a few minutes of stress, bending days are fun. There is evidence for Bronze age wood bending both in surviving boat timbers including those of the Dover Boat and also there are apparently also sites alongside water where tons of pot boilers (burnt rocks) have been found. Hot rocks can be used to steam large boat timbers as in this slide show of a NWC dug out http://www.haidanation.ca/Pages/Splash/PhotoGallery/canoe_steaming.html

It would have been fun to experiment with different possible Bronze Age heating methods but the budget does not allow for that and we have plenty of other variables to experiment with so we are using 21st century heating. This is our first steaming set up, made from 2" polystyrene, we have since replaced it with high density cellotex insulation board which lasts better with the heat.

the steam is provided by a bank of wallpaper steamers with another on preheat ready to keep the temperature up. Keeping these topped up is a full time job for 3 hours. Crucially we also have various temperature probes to let us know the temperature inside the cabinet and in the centre of our piece of wood.

 

With our early steams there was lots of nervous checking and packing to keep steam from escaping, we now have it well sorted and are running at slight pressure in the chamber giving us over 100 degrees.

 Now the moment of truth, off comes the steamer.

 across comes the plank.

 our idea had been to have a range of formers where we thought the steamed board should finish up then strap it in place.

 I think this picture shows the sort of nervous tension that tends to be associated with steaming.

 We had no way of predicting how far up the timber would rise as it came in so had wedges for under the formers, there were various issues though as you can see here we have a gap at the base where the timbers join despite being up tight on the top of the formers.

 We had to rapidly dispense with the formers, bend freehand and rig extra levers which gripped the plank and put a twist in it to push the base in and top out. It worked but it all took too long so when it had cooled down and we took the clamps off it sprung back too much. This is the same end of the same timber after having been steamed a second time and held in place with the clamps.

The bend transforms the timbers from straight boards into beautiful curvaceous boat timbers. This is not just about aesthetics though the boat shape with the base dipping down in the centre and up at the ends is called rocker, the degree of rocker is crucial to boat design. A flat bottomed boat is great for going in straight lines on a canal but it doesn't like to turn and it would break its back on waves.

This image shows my side timbers one steamed and the other as carved, it's hard to show the degree of the three dimensional curve in a photo but it is remarkable and astonishing that folk were doing this 3,500 years ago, it really is complex stuff.

We are genuinely feeling our way with this project and for every step forward there is a lot of head scratching, planning and forethought. It is beginning to come together nicely now though.

 

We are now on a very welcome 4 day Easter break but this is what the boat looks like now. The next stage is cutting the joints and stitching the planks together with twisted yew withies, marking out for the top planks, bending up the base planks to match the side planks and cutting the infill pieces for the ends. It is meant to be launched on May 5th and to stand any chance of that we will be working very hard. There may be an opportunity for one or two skilled volunteers to join us over this period so if you can get time off and want to be involved in a great woodworking project get in touch. Most of the work will be lifting and carrying during steaming and lots of cutting stitch holes with bronze tools, I think we have around 600 to do.

 

Just as a comparison this is the original 3,500 year old boat in the museum alongside where we are working. I used to think the Mary Rose was special, this boat was down there 7 times as long and had already been buried 1500 years when the Romans arrived. It is the oldest surviving sea going vessel anywhere in the world and hardly anyone knows about it. To be building a copy of it and have access to see the original close too is a very special experience.