--- Abrigon Gusiq <[email protected]> schrieb am So, 31.1.2010:
> Seen the special on PBS on Egypts > boats, they talked around using linen and like to plug the > holes, like modern caulk or like, but they do not seem to > consider other means, such as sap from trees, isn't there a > tree or two from the region that is very sappy and can be > used as a caulking/cloaking agent? > > Cloaking as in you paint the ship, or dip it into the > liquid and it forms a seal, with the lumber only being a > frame work to keep the sap from cracking or ... sorry half > thought ideas. The sap is the ship, the planks give it a > skeleton? I don't think that is feasible with any non-synthetic resin. Seawater is corrosive. Give it enough time, and it will destroy almost anything immersed in it. Egyprtian ships must have been pretty good - impressively good, for their time. I'm sure they used something more than flax to caulk them. But they weren't designed for voyages like the one Onno is planning, and I don't think the design scales very well. Minds, the Phoenicians rounded the Cape of Good Hope in the mid-first millennium BC, so there are things you can do even with less than ideal designs. To bad no one used linen like canvas as a boat > cover? Opps, what about leather or like? I know here in > Alaska we have boats that are skin covered.. > > The wood necessary is small and limited, but the skins are > available, all you need do is kill/skin a walrus or seal or > like and .. Keep it moist (from drying out) and the low salt > content in the water I expect helps somehow? AFAIR the trick is to first tan the skin (which is not that hard if you're willing to deal with the stench) and then oil or grease it extremely liberally. Problem again, skin boats are a great design for small craft, but they don't scale. Severin's Brendan already suffered from problems related to hull size. Undoubtedly, a skilled curragh-builder at home in the tradition could have avoided many of them by dint of foreseering the weak spots, but still, there are limits to what any design principle will bear. You run into much the same problem with wooden hulls about 150 feet later. For a transoceanic exploration voyage, I think your only viable choice for a pre-industrial civilisation is such a wooden hull, ideally held together using metal. Cheers Volker __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Sie sind Spam leid? Yahoo! Mail verfügt über einen herausragenden Schutz gegen Massenmails. http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
