Dawn Sailing Barge Trust Limited
August 2005 Newsletter
The Dawn sailing barge now lies inside a lighter dry dock at Heybridge Basin in Essex. She is being extensively re-built by Tim Goldsack and his team of shipwrights. The work is being funded by a Heritage Lottery grant with matching funding from a variety of local contributors.
During our summer ‘cruise’ Sue and I looked in to Heybridge Basin in our boat Letitia for a night and paid a visit to the Dawn to see progress:
The first thing is that the iron deck beams have now been welded and galvanised back to impressively good condition and are now back in place, along with the new half beams forming the side decks alongside the hold.
The original iron deck beams have been refurbished and re-installed. The smaller beams are new.
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Refurbished iron deck beams |
New iron work in place |
We saw that Tim Goldsack and his team had split themselves in to two teams to continue two jobs: two men were completing fabricating and fixing the new inner whale just under the deck beams along both sides of the barge.
Most of the ‘naval timbers’ – bottom corner knees – are now in place They also were starting to prepare the larch to make the new chine keelsons and new keelson by putting a large stack of timber through a huge planer thicknesser kindly loaned by Clint, the owner of the yard.
These timbers will be laminated in a vertical stack to form the chine keelsons along both sides at the bottom. And the main keelson up the middle, over the top of the new oak floors.
Once this lot is all bolted in place the main box structure of the barge will be complete and progress can be made on the lining, the outer planking and the decks and so on.
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New inner whale |
The new inner whale runs the whole length of the barge and helps support the deck
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Naval Timbers |
Naval Timbers in place |
The naval timbers are strengthening knees fixed along the bottom corner - the 'chine'.
Meanwhile, Tim and another man were working on the curved sections making up the stern and starting to bolt the whole structure together. The stern ribs are oak fixed to stern deadwoods made of opepe – a very durable tropical timber which comes in large sections. Tim put a complete new top on the S.B.Cabby over ten years ago which is standing up well to the tests of time.
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Oak Curves |
Tim Goldsack drilling the stem curves |
The fixings for all this are either galvanised bolts or galvanised iron ‘dumps’ which are effectively very large long nails. Holes are drilled for these slightly smaller than the diameter of the dump, which is then driven in with a sledge hammer. Once in they will never come out.
It is worth noting that all this work is done using good durable materials, and all the timbers are soaked in linseed oil as they are being assembled so the barge really will last for a very long time in very good condition – especially now that it will be possible to cover her over in the winter and keep the rain water off rather than have to send her out to sea in all weathers.
Tim told us that there will be a couple of months work to complete the stern, then they will complete the bow with a new stem apron. They will then be able to think about planking the sides – which will be visually quite exciting and passers by will be able to see a new barge taking shape from the outside.
Larch planking stacked ready to glue together to make the chine keelsons
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Larch stacked for the chine keelson |
I mentioned that they are laminating the new large section beams. This is done by gluing together several long overlapping pieces of timber with West resin. The result will be a totally waterproof laminated timber much stronger than a single piece.
The advantage is that it can be assembled in sections rather than trying to crane in very large pieces in situ. The cost of such large timbers would be prohibitive, and the transport costs on to site would be more than the cost of the timber, and then would come the difficulty of trying to crane it in to place. The laminated beams are a better job all round.
The next open day will be in October – date to be confirmed. The volunteers also intend to meet and discuss work for the winter period.
Michael Feather. August 2005