Light of Day

We are in the final week of work before launching.  Now its all about tiny details all over the boat.  One of the main details is covering our nail heads with copper plate.  I got the rubrail and caprail on the last couple of days and today we put plate over those nail heads.  We will probably get all the nails at the chine done tomorrow.  

I decided to move the boat out of the shop and onto horses in front.  In part because we borrowed a ro (a sculling oar) and I needed space to see how it fit.  Its basically too short and of funny proportions (its OLD).

We enlisted the art students from Nihon Art University.  They are here polishing several cars to a mirror finish.  We had three bars under the boat and they ganged up on either end and had no trouble carrying the boat.  One photo shows their professor and a student.

Just before we wrapped up an elderly man stopped by whom we have seen regularly.  He asked who was going to scull the boat at the launching and he was quite surprised that I am on the only one among us who knows how to do it.  Then he idly mentioned that he used to scull his boats, and that he still had a ro.  I pressed him and found out he has three of them, so we’ve made arrangements tomorrow to go to his house and check them out.  He seems very amused that we might borrow one.

Bits and Pieces

Anyone who has built a boat knows that once the hull is finished there is far more work to be done to finally finish the boat.  And its time-consuming.  Japanese boats are remarkably straightforward in many ways, but nevertheless things still take time.

Takumi spent a couple of days fitting beams and floorboards.  We left them rough sawn for traction and arranged them in the traditional way, though we got creative at the stern where the hull narrows.

I installed the rubrails (koberi) and caprails.  We used clench nails for the koberi, or properly I should say we clenched the nails that we had.  In my experience clenched nails in Japan are copper, made of flat stock like the steel nails.  We were given some small steel nails and so I decided to treat them the same way.  

They are set in a shallow mortise on the outside that gets a copper cover later.  Inside the hull I cut another mortise for the nail to lay in so it would stay flush to the inside face of the planking.  If we had copper nails I would have bent the tip and sent it back into the planking, but the steel nails were pretty stiff so I omitted this step.  

Also forward I built a steeply sloping foredeck called a kappa.  In this part of Japan there are commonly seen on small boats.  I need to get an explanation for this arrangement, which is pretty unique.

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.