Two Suns

Today I had an inspiration for a bit of political/artistic treatment of our boat.  I installed the toko today, the large beam that spans the transom and is used to haul boats like this  ashore (or up a marina ramp) at the end of the day.  I was thinking about various ways to deal with the ends of the beam, and I have seen geometric patterns and painted designs on other Japanese boats, as well as copper covering.  

Then I realized the rectangular ends were perfect for the Bengali and Japanese flags.  Both flags feature a red circle in the center, the Bengali with a green background and the Japanese white.  

I asked one of the interpreters, a Japanese woman who lived in Bangladesh, to ask the artist painting the bus if he would paint the flags for us.  He stopped by with his paint and within ten minutes the job was done.  

The Japanese flag is a red disk on a white background, the Bengali a red disk on a greed background.  The Japanese flag represents the sun, while the Bengali flag represents both the sun and the blood of those who died in their war for independence, with the green background representing the fertile land of Bangladesh.

Just as the artist finished I noticed a gorgeous sunset breaking over the harbor.  As we packed up in the dark that same part of the sky was streaked with lightning.

Bengali Launching

Last weekend saw the launching of the Bengali boat.  We had a good crowd with the Bengali craftspeople there singing and dancing.  The Bengali ambassador, Mr. Masud Bin Momen, flew down from Tokyo and made some excellent remarks.  Fram Kitagawa, the organizer of the Setouchi Festivale, cut the ribbon and then the two Bengali shipwrights did a series of blessings for the boat.

They also invited us to do a short Shinto blessing.  

You will note the bow of the boat is unpainted.  The Bengalis believe the “head” of the boat is sacred, and therefore should not be covered in any way.  Their launching involved washing the bow of the boat and offering prayers to that spot.  The full ceremony includes a series of candles that are lit and placed around the boat, but because the proper candles were not available the Bengalis omitted this part of their ceremony.

They paddled their boat across the harbor and then sailed back with the prevailing breeze.  They spent the next hour giving spectators rides around the harbor.  The shipwrights and their interpreter left the next day, and we miss them.  It was wonderful to get to know them and learn about their amazing traditions.

These photographs are all by Professor Kurakake of Nihon Art University.

Uwadana

Uwadana means “upper shelf” and refers to the top plank, or sheerstrake.  Like all of our planking these are taken symmetrically from the log.  The thick keel plank was from the center of the tree, the kajiki were the next two planks taken from either side of the center, and now these two planks are the adjacent ones to those.  I oriented the root side forward to give put the clearest wood toward the bow, both for looks and bending, with some knots aft.  

There is quite a sweep aft in this plank given how the stern rises.  Like lapstrake boatbuilding, we just put the whole plank up against the boat and just traced off the bottom edge from the kajiki.  The top edge we will scale from our drawing.  The triangular piece we cut off at the stern is nailed to the top edge to give us enough material.  

We struggled to get these planks on at the bow.  There is quite a twist at the lower edge and we finally had to resort to bolting a temporary butt plate to the plank and pulling it in with a Spanish windlass.  This actually worked quite well and we also used this at the stern.  Pipe clamps were also an enormous help.

Two sets of beams are mortised with through tenons shouldered on the inside of the planks.  The tenons were wedged and the ends sawn flush to the outside.  The nails take an extreme angle toward the bow.

Bengali Shipwrights, again

These two men deserve their own blog, certainly, but I am more than happy to keep readers abreast of what they are doing.  Their work is fascinating, as is that of the NPO they represent, which is trying to preserve this craft.

They have fully reassembled the hull, using a large jute rope passed around the hull pulled with a hardwood bar to squeeze the planking tight.  The planking is jackfruit wood.

They began nailing from the inside, cutting a shallow mortise quickly with a chisel then nailing into the bottom of the mortise, folding the nail over and driving the other end into the top of the mortise, making a kind of staple across the seam.  The nails are sheared from thin steel.  

Once the topsides are fastened the hull is turned over and fastenings are place in the bottom.  They actually do caulk with jute, wherever necessary, working around the staples.

Seto Nai Kai Museum

Its been about a week since I put up a posting, but expect a flurry of them now.  Later today we have the launching of the Bengali boat.  Earlier this week we took the Bengali boatbuilders to the Seto Inland Sea Museum, probably Japan’s oldest maritime collection.  The museum is located high on a peninsula with a panoramic view of the Inland Sea.  The collection is fascinating, focusing on the rich traditions of fishing and seagoing trade of this part of Japan.  The lines drawing we are using to build our boat comes from the museum’s collection.

There is an excellent mockup of a boat shop inside the museum, with a partially built boat inside.  Next to the boat is a plank being bent, using the same method we used (note the stone used for a weight), right down to the tin containers for fireboxes.  A series of models shows the steps in building a small boat, as well as an interesting method for bending planks when it is not possible to prop them overhead, or the boatbuilder has large clamps.

Another display shows the steps in sawing between planks to finish the seam, and the use of chisels to cut mortises and pilot nail holes.

One final detail captivated me: in Japanese boats often athwartship beams are tenoned through the hull, shouldered on the inside.  Often the tenons are cut flush and covered with copper (what we will do on our boat) but in larger boats the tenons are exposed slightly and wedged.  I have never seen anything like the wedging of the tenons on one large boat at the museum.  Its really a key, dovetailed in cross section and tapering from top to bottom.  The timber on top is the rubrail, which locks the key in place.

Improvisation

One of the things that has struck me about Japanese boatbuilding is the degree to which during the construction of a boat the builder makes changes that deviate from the original drawing.  All my teachers who used drawings worked from a 1/10th scale image.  Scaling from that size is inaccurate, yet the drawings were just a starting point for them; during construction issues would come up with the material and changes would be made on the spot.  The process of sawing to fit planks can easily remove more than 1/4” of material.  As a result the final boat could deviate considerably from the measurements first laid down on the wood.

Photos here show my apprentice, Takumi Suzuki, fitting the kajiki with our handsaw, and then cutting the nail holes with a special chisel.

In the West boats are generally built around moulds that define the shape exactly.  If the builder is careful in building their mould from the lofting the boat should conform exactly to the plans.  But Western boats are built of thinner and narrower planks for a given size than Japanese boats, and are much easier to force into a particular shape.  The Japanese builder has to struggle to bend thick, wide planking, and it doesn’t always work out the way one might intend.

In our boat I tried to keep the angle of the kajiki consistent with my lofted lines, but at the forward station (called in this region the habadokoro, literally “width place”) I just felt we were forcing the planks too much, so I let them stand a bit tall.  Our kajiki are probably 3/8” higher at the chine than designed.  

When we hung the second kajiki yesterday I tried to keep the planks at the same angle, but at the aft habadokoro the starboard kajiki stayed a bit low after we nailed it.  I tried propping it higher but decided against putting too much strain on the plank and risking cracking it.  I will try raising one plank and dropping the other and get them as close as possible.

Again, I saw all my teachers basically abandon their drawings fairly early in the process, opting for sound construction techniques and overcoming unexpected issues.  In this respect Japanese boatbuilding is very improvisational.

Fitting the kajiki

The first plank on the boat is called the kajiki.  In the West we would call this the garboard plank.  After propping it securely in place, we did the saw-fitting technique used earlier when we assembled the bottom plank from two pieces.  This is especially difficult between plank seams, in part because the seam curves, but more because at any moment you can be sawing against the grain of one plank or the other, and this has a tendency to catch the saw and carry the blade into the plank.  My apprentice Takumi Suzuki spent most of the day sawing the seam for the first kajiki.  He had to carefully position wedges to open the seam up enough to not pinch the sawblade.  It is slow work, not to be rushed, because we are going for a watertight fit.  I worked fitting the plank at the transom and stem.  One photo show the fit at the transom after sawing the seam.

We also sawed along the stem rabbet, and then pounded the plank at the aft end with a mallet, slowly moving it tight into the rabbet joint.  Note in these photos you can see the interesting shape to the bottom plank (called here the kawara).  Aft of our joint the plank rises, and this creates a rounded shape aft in the kajiki.  This is a tricky spot to both lay out and get fair, and is probably far too much to explain in a blog posting.  Sorry.

Now that the plank has been fit we can begin the process of nailing it.