Page 348 - The Complete Rigger’s Apprentice
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CHAPTER 10
Fancy Work
What with the years-long voyages that used to be intricacy. I know, I know—picky, picky, picky. But
the rule in olden days, sailors would find themselves as long as we have the fruit of thousands of hours of
with a lot of time on their hands, and lines in them. boredom (the Mother of Invention?), why not take a
Given patience, trial and error, and that peculiarly little time and make good use of it?
human urge to create semi-useful frippery, hun-
dreds of beautiful, intricate complications came into
being: fancy work. It’s an art form like scrimshaw HITCHING
or woodcarving, but unlike these pursuits, its artful-
ness is intrinsic to its use; what’s right for a bellrope For instance, there’s decorative hitching, a way to
is wrong for a thump mat. cover cylindrical objects with twine to provide chaf-
Today fancy work is too often mere decoration ing gear or a more comfortable handhold. The sim-
made with no concern for proportion or appropriate plest form is French Hitching (Figure 10-1), a series
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