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caulking a wooden boat and knotting


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Great video. They make it look so easy ..... you can tell by his "professional boat builder" speak that it requires a bit of a knack and plenty of practice.

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Re-caulking is the easy bit, getting the old caulking out is the hard part, I helped re-caulk Broadland Bittern below the waterline about 20 years ago when my neice owned it, that guys language is pretty tame compared to mine at the time, it took three of us nearly a month to do the job, and it's not a job I'd want to do again, so if you now own Broadland Bittern I'm one of the idiots that re-caulked it,

Regards Frank,,,,

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one old wooden broads boat i helped recaulk had plastic laundry line for caulking, that was easy to remove but i wouldent recommend it :lol:

how many strands of caulking cotton used, depends on the width of the gap thats being caulked and the cotton has to be twisted before use.

i used to use an electric drill to twist the cotton by tying one end to the drill bit and anchoring the other end.

remember the planks bellow the water line will swell and dont pack it too tight.

jill

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Actualy Jill! I was going to say that the way that guy is doing it isn't the way I was taught, like you the way I was shown you used more or less strands of caulking cotton depending on the size of the seam you were caulking, and I seem to remember using three caulking irons, one for packing the cotton into the seam, the second for compacting it, and there was another thinner one called a dumb iron that you used ahead of where you were caulking to open up a thin seam so you could re-caulk it, the way the guy in the video is doing obviously must work, but I was taught not to overpack the caulking because when it expands you could actualy damage the planks and stress the screws making things worse, Jack the old guy that taught me was an ex boat builder and had probably forgotton more about boats than i'll ever know, but I do remember his toolbox was a weird and wonderful place, he had all sorts of caulking irons and mallets and some wonderfull little things he had made for removing old caulking, it was an honour to watch him work he was a true craftsman, I've never seen woodwork like his and most of it was done purely by eye, it was even more of an honour when he took me under his wing and started teaching me a few things, sadly he passed away before I could learn very much, but I reckon if I had half the knowledge Jack had I be making a fortune today,,

Regards Frank,,,

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hi frank

like you i was very lucky as the 1st boat yard i lived in in the midlands was run by a loyds registered boat builder who taught me a few tricks.

some caulking irons ...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/coastalher ... 432716395/

this is a really nice site for animated knots.

click on a knot to see it tied...

http://www.animatedknots.com/indexboati ... dknots.com

http://www.animatedknots.com/indexropec ... dknots.com

some nice pictures here...

http://www.flickr.com/groups/marlinspikeknotworks/pool/

jill

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