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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Don Bowen <don.bowen AT earthlink.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Nuclear energy in an oil-poor world
  • Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2005 09:22:36 -0700

At 6/2/2005, you wrote:
Then I was reading about how
the Norse made those marvelous overlap constructed ships. How did they get
the planks?

They built in the clinker style with lashed planks. The hull was left unfinished and water would swell the planks to make them water tight. Later boatbuilding styles used copper rivets to hold the planks together.

The answer was that they rived them. Split them with froes from
the log.

I believe they used wedges to split the logs then used an adz to bring the planks to finished size. One major advantage of the clinker built style is that plank thickness is not important. They also used a ribless construction so there was no concern for interior surface. The only place they had to be accurate was on the overlap. Clinker built is very common in early metal age cultures.

For another example of split plank construction look at the northwest coast natives. Houses used very wide planks split from logs with wedges. The planks were then lashed to poles. In summer the houses near hunting and gathering grounds but in summer the planks were transported to shore side villages. Before metal the planks were left as split from the log. The time between the introduction of metal and the first sawmills was very short so the cultures never developed a smooth board technique.


Don Bowen Awl Knotted Up

My travel journal
http://www.braingarage.com/Dons/Travels/journal/Journal.html

My present location is the star on the map in the link below
http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?latlongtype=decimal&latitude=33.506083&longitude=-117.099019





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