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.