[TheForge] Re: Woodwright's shop

[Mike Spencer]

When the Block Shop was still in business in Lunenburg, NS, I watched
their blacksmith make eyes for ship's rigging -- eye-bolts and tackle
block hooks.  He split the end (of ca. 3/4" round), wrapped the split
on a mandrel, lapped the ends and forge welded it into an eye.

I asked why he did it that way and he said, "It's stronger".  It was
only later that I realized that the Block Shop had been ironing tackle
since wrought iron days and in wrought iron, it *is* stronger because
it puts the strain on the cross-grain instead of the end-grain of the
iron.  They were doing it the they'd always done it even though they
had been using ordinary m/s for decades.

You wouldn't normally make a wooden tension member by boring a hole in
a 1" board near its end.  You'd try to ensure that the wood grain ran
across the direction of the tensile force.  Same for the grain of
wrought iron, especially if the quality of the iron was unpredictable
and lives depended on your work.

- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^

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