These thoughts are based in 5 weeks working with bronze adzes and axes, I have learned a lot but feel there is still much more to learn and improve. At the moment we are all spending quite a bit of time fiddling with tools but as time goes on my time is spent experimenting and some of the tools that…
Now the outside profile of my ile plank is looking pretty good. You can see the profile nearest the camera needs a bit more cutting from the left hand side to let it sit down so the top edges of the profile templates all sit parallel. With the outside finished I turn it over and get stuck in to the…
This is Richard Darrah who along with Ole Crumlin-Pedersen drew up the plans for the replica boat. The picture here is a 1/10th scale drawing of the curved ile which I am making. It is surprising how big a proportion of the time is spent marking, measuring, moving timber from one position to another to get it securely held in…
A few folk have asked if there were artifacts found with the original boat. Sadly there were very few and those mostly fragmentary. The boat had clearly been pulled up out of the river to a marshy area and partly dismembered before sinking into the archaeological record. One artifact we do need is paddles. It is thought the side planks…
My major task for the Dover boat reconstruction is to carve the iles. The boat is made of 4 main timbers, two flat ones across the bottom and two curved ones at the side. These would originally have been topped by another upright plank which was cut away presumably for re use when the boat was abandoned. The problem with…
Now I am home I can finally update with pictures of the exciting project I am working on. In 1992 during construction of an underpass in Dover the remains of a stitched plank boat were discovered. It has never had as much press as the Mary Rose but from an archaeological point of view it is equally as interesting. It…
The most complete example of advanced technical woodworking from Bronze age Europe is the Dover Boat, built around 1550BC and discovered during construction of a new underpass in 1992. Despite the rarity and importance of the find archaeologists had only 7 days to excavate and remove the first section of the boat from site before work continued. A second excavation…
Following my last post where I was getting ready for an exciting bronze age woodworking project I have now been working for a couple of weeks with the bronze tools and am hugely surprised and impressed. First a couple of pics I missed last time showing how I lash the bronze head to the haft with rawhide. The rawhide is…
I am currently involved with a very exciting woodworking project which I will post lots about in due course but there is a press embargo until March the 6th. For now I can tell you that I have been having fun experimenting with bronze tools. I have used bronze tools a little in the past but only felled an odd…
Last October I spent a lot of time advising the team for a new BBC program on potential craftspeople they could visit as part of a series at that time billed as “Heritage at Risk”. The program is now airing fronted by John Craven as “Heritage Heroes”. They tour the country looking at buildings and traditions at risk and the…
