Timber Framers Guild Forums General Off Topic Viking Ship Reconstruction

Some pretty neat stuff on Robin Wood's blog, check out the Viking ship reconstruction.

http://greenwood-carving.blogspot.com/

Hi Bub,

I just checked out this link and I believe that the correct American descriptive term is "awesome".

I was also interested to discover the use of the word Klink to describe an early form of metal riveting. The Scottish word for jail (Gaol) is klink e.g. "thrown into the klink" and it might well be that Robin has also managed to explain the origins of this word in respect of being forcefully held in place.

Hitler visited the Viking ship museum during WWII and made a comment to his tour guide that these were tiny when compared with the Bismark to which the rather brave (or foolish) guide replied "Ah yes, but we invaded England in these boats !"

Regards

Ken Hume

Hello,

A Klinknagel, in Dutch is the word still used for a rivet.

Greetings,

Don Wagstaff

Could it be chased to clinch, clasp, held? And the end bent at an angle?

great link to that blog, the viking ship is great, and so is much of the other work and writing. thanks... - mike

Excellent link.

Last Friday I was at the Cape Cod Maritime Museum and saw the remains of the Sparrow Hawk. It had holes with what looked like washer indentations around the holes. It must also have been a "clinker" as Robin mentions. Very interesting.

I have often referred to the Vikings style of ship construction as "Klinker Built" and as you point out this refers to the riveting. But, these rivets were not apparently always made of metal. At one time, the best ships were riveted with special wooden rivets, which consisted of pegs that had heads on one end and slits on the other. Wedges were driven into these slits to hold the planks fast, and this style was apparently a much more flexible vessel, but much more expensive to make.

One interesting thing about these ships. Most wooden ships are built with ribs that then have planking applied to them. Klinker ships are built with the planks, which then have the ribs custom craftd to fit inside. The primary structure is keel and planks, with ribs serving to brace things together.

I'd personally like to see a replica of the great Ormurin Langi, the great warship which took over 100 of Norway's mightiest oaks to build.

Let's see now, viking ship reconstruction out of Norway, 13th century castle replication in France, scale model Polish synagog reproduction, personally I spent a day sometime back helping at the raising of a nineteenth century windmill. Come on America, lets see your stuff.

Greetings,

Don Wagstaff

The Synagogue was a project driven primarily by a US based art, design, and research team. The TFG was brought in as the structural and timber specific muscle. The TFG also led the workshop efforts and the bulk of the ground team was from stateside.

But yes, it happened in Poland.


Just wait. Another 20 or 30 years and you will be in shock and awe at the amount of period correct suburban tract housing reconstruction projects we'll have going on. There will be great focus on using period correct tools and dressing in period correct garb. Hair metal will be playing from boom boxes, there will be arguments over which pneumatic nailers should be used (hoses only!), and there will be a resurgent interest into the mullet and a cheap to buy liquid substance that loosely resembled watered down beer.