C.Nurse dovetail saw restoration

[george wilson]

We had to make several early saws for Jamestown 1607 to use. Some of them were Dutch saws,like the one Kees posted above. The "umbrella handle" (as Jon and I dubbed it) was surprisingly easy to saw with. It doesn't look that way in the picture,though.

We were supposed to make them a bunch of planes,too,but they never got around to placing an order for them. They seemed like a disorganized bunch over there. I think what they liked to do the most was sail their largest ship(quite a small one!),the "Susan Constant" down to Norfolk for the "Harbor Fest" festival every year. I went to Yorktown to see the "Hermionie"(sp?) when it first sailed from France. One of the Jamestown's smaller ships (there are 3) was docked beside it. It looked like a large lifeboat compared to the Hermionie,an 18th. C. replica that had just been completed. What a beautiful piece of woodworking it was!! Unfortunately,we were unable to go below decks. They apparently had built cabins below decks for the privacy of the female members of the crew. The ship did have real cast iron cannon,as opposed to the fiberglass shells of cannon you normally see. When I was aboard the "Victory",(Lord Nelson's victorious ship at Trafalgar),docked in a drydock at Portsmouth.England,it had only these shells of cannon. The old hull was deemed too weak to stand the weight of real guns. The whole ship had been replanked with pine,rather than the original oak. I guess oak was too scarce in England at the time of the rebuilding. Or they just didn't have the budget(more likely). They seemed to be hurting for money,from what one of the staff said. They had only one remaining flintlock firing mechanism that still worked. At noon they did fire a salute with that mechanism mounted on the salute gun.

But,at the Tower of London,everything was English brown oak. Beautiful stuff,too! Many thousands of board feet must have been used in reconstructing the interior. The original building had been gutted by fire at some point in its history. I forget when. The large hall,which was currently used as the cafeteria,had an enormous ceiling,full of very large oak beams. You could have framed up a pretty large house with the wood in that ceiling!

I remember the clever folding chairs in the captain's cabin on the Victory. Half way down the sides of the chairs,they folded flat after the seat was removed. In battle,there were cannon in the cabin,which were used in the fight. All the collapsible walls of the officer's quarters were taken down and stowed,too.

I loved the way the cabin looked,with the long, curved row of windows in the back. Im one of the nice side windows,which ballooned out,was a smallish,sheet metal bath tub for the captain. On the other side was his toilet. Nothing more than a mahogany plank with holes through it to sit on. I am sure that in a storm,sea water could sometimes gush up through those holes! The crew's "seats of ease",as they were called,were 6 holes(I think),in the bow,behind the curved,decorative railings there. And this was for what? about 400 men? One of the jobs of the newest seaman was cleaning off the splatters beneath those seats of ease. I don't know what they did in heavy seas,when the whole bow would be buried in waves! Probably just hang out over the sides? No privacy at all!