Martin repaired the two ends of the “livholt” and now Joost is helping to see if they can get one of the rotten pegs out, next week they have to see if they can find the peg on the outside because from here it isn’t working.
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On the port side Joost is busy changing more planks. We are still changing less planks than anticipated and it looks like it will stay that way.
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This week Peder, the electrician finished his work on Brottsjø for this year. All the old switches, sockets and switchboards are cleaned, measured and repaired, if necessary using old parts where possible. Look at the results, they look like new again.
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This week I worked with the new stern. The old stern didn’t fit so good anymore after so many years so I spent some time measuring the old Skin and inner stern/knee to make sure that the new one fits good.
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Our smith has made a new part for the steering system. Chains from the steering wheel control this arm that is connected to the rudder, it was originally made by a smith so we used the same techniques to copy the old one.
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This week we started making the first new parts for Brottsjø and the sun is also back, what more do you want.
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We started working again on Brottsjø this week.
Because we don’t have enough boat builders work goes slowly on board Brottsjø but, we started working with the electric systems and Kazimierz the mechanic is organizing and planning his work.
This week we removed the “egnerhus”. There are parts from different periods, from the 1960 to the ’90. Under the glass fiber roof cover, probably from the 70’s we found small nails indicating that there was originally a canvas cover on the wooden roof. The sink and poorly made table are from the 90’s and have to go. When Brottsjø was used for fishing there was also a second stove standing in the “egnerhus” used for cooking and drying cloth, you can still see the round hole.
One of the last things the mechanics took of Brottsjø were the tubes around the chain steering. Now they can begin with restoring and cleaning everything.
This week we started taking away the old “skandekk”, that is the construction at the side of the deck that prevents water that’s coming from the deck to leak in-between the ribs and so in parts of the boat that you can’t inspect and thus potentially can cause serious damage. Another important function of the “skandekk” is preventing the deck to get wider and wider, the way we make these decks water tight is by forcing hemp into the different seams between the planks, by doing this you create enormous forces sideways and the ” skandekk” stops these. At this picture you see how I check if the deck is straight or slightly curved. The “randplank” between the straight deck and the curved “skandekk” gets special attention because of its shape.
Because the calculation has to be ready in a couple of weeks I concentrated this week on the “lugar”. The interior is as old as Brottsjø itself so from the thirties, we try to save as mush of the original interior as possible but we have to check the structure underneath like the ribs.
Brottsjø in the sliphall. I made fixed points in the slip hall and use these as a reverence for the grid you see here on the boat. The grid can help to position the different parts of the boat later when we start rebuilding the boat. This is one of the new things we use on this project, in the past a reference point sometimes got lost because it was taken away, like a stem.
One of the problems with the old electricity, the wiring, switches, sockets and equipment is that we don’t exactly know what we can use later. What are the regulations, is it aloud to use old wires. The goal is to save as much of the original as is allowed so for now it’s finding out the regulations.
Almost 10 Years ago I worked for the Nordnorsk Fartøyvernsenter og Båtmuseum in Gratangen Norway as a wooden boat builder. There are three of these “fartøyvernsenter”, (boat preservation center) in Norway, two are specialized in restoring wooden boats and one is specialized in steel or iron boats.
I started working in Gratangen in 2006 as a boat builder and in 2010 I was responsible as project manager for the Restoration of Brottsjø together with the help of the other experienced boat builders. Because my Norwegian writing skills were not good enough I started a blog where I wrote in English and kept a relative detailed rapport on what I was doing on a weekly basis.
Nochrisis 