Hedderwick: Marine Architecture (1830)

PART III - PRACTICE OF SHIPBUILDING.

Treenailing. — As to the treenailing of the bottom and top-sides, it is the general custom to double-bore each timber on the breadth of a strake if it exceed 10 inches and to double and single-bore all narrow strakes; that is, to double-bore one timber, and single-bore the next alternately. The size of the auger for the bottom plank, for vessels from 100 to 200 tons measurement, is inch and quarter, and for the top-sides inch and eighth. For vessels of 400 or 500 tons, the bottom is inch and three-eighth, and the top-sides inch and quarter.

Sheer-planks, in many places called the Paint-strakes, are the uppermost strakes on flush ships. They are commonly one inch thicker than the other planks of the top-sides, and should be worked from plank of a durable quality, and perfectly free from shakes or sapwood, as the bolts are the principal binding of the upper-deck beams, and pass through the paint-strakes. For vessels of 160 or 200 tons, the paint-strakes require to be about 11 inches broad, and 3 inches thick, and their butts hook-scarphed the edge way; also the scarphs bolted through, the edge way, with two or three bolts placed in the way of the openings between the timbers. In all vessels, the paint-strakes are commonly worked as broad as can be got, that they may have a good hold of the timbers, and allow room for the bolts of the knees of the deck-beams. Vessels of 260 tons and upwards should have two strakes, the upper one bolted down to the other, having a bolts through edge-ways, opposite the space between every other timber. The paint-strakes should be fair-going stuff, as it is difficult to get them set the edge way, and as they are not to be full treenailed until the beams and knees are bolted through them, when they are examined, and where any fastening is awanting in the fleet of any of the stanchions or timber-heads, it is put in. The paint-strake should be very neatly taken to the sheer, and the upper edge dressed with a declivity outwards, of one inch to a foot.

We may now suppose the ship all fast round the bilges, the shores all set, and the wales and upper-works all planked.

Peter Hedderwick: A Treatise on Marine Architecture, containing the theory and practice of shipbuilding, with rules for the proportions of masts, rigging, weight of anchors, &c including Practical Geometry and the Principles of Mechanics; observations on the Strength of Materials, Hydrostatics, &c. with many valuable tables calculated for the use of shipwrights and seamen; also the proportions, scantlings, construction, and propelling power of steam-ships. Illustrated with twenty large plates, containing plans and draughts of merchant-vessels from fifty to five hundred tons, with mast and rigging plans; plans and sections of a steam-boat of eighty-horse power; and eight quarto plates of diagrams, &c., by Peter Hedderwick.
Printed for the Author, Edinburgh, 1830. p 284.

Transcribed by Lars Bruzelius

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