Page 521 - The Ashley Book of Knots
P. 521
THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS
tices of a full century. Wire rigging began to appear with the ad-
vent of the clipper ships and rigging at that time became loftier
and lighter. But the day of the clipper was a short one. It has been
only within the last twenty-five or thirty years, when the relative
importance of commercial and pleasure sailing craft ha~ been shifting,
that the clamor for lighter gear aloft has a ain been heard.
Ropes and line for convenience in hand ing, or else for purposes
of storage, are coiled or wound on reels of various sorts, which vary
all the way from a flat stick to elaborate ball-bearing anglers' reels.
Gardeners have their edging and hose reels and laundresses their
clothesline reels. There are table swifts for yarn, and spools for
thread. Spindles, bobbins, cops and shuttles are employed in spinning
and weaving. There are tatting needles and netting needles. Reelli
may vary in size all the way from a ten-foot seine wheel, on a
river bank, to the quarter-inch bobbin of a sewing machine.
Right-hand or plain-laid rope properly is coiled clockwise but it
is sometimes simpler to coil new rope left-handed. The right way to
- coil a cable, of course, is counterclockwise, its lay being opposite
... to plain- or right-laid rope .
Many of the illustrations in the next two chapters have been drawn
from objects from my own collection and from the collection of the
Mariners' Museum in Newport News. Others are from sketches
that I have made on ships that I have visited, since the days when I
)/ 3085' first began to draw.
Ship models as a source of contemporary information are usually
untrustworthy. Models are delicate things that require frequent re-
pair, and they offer too much temptation for the amateur rigger,
who sometimes has more zeal than knowledge. Most ship models at
one time or another have fallen into the hands of at least one of
these.
3083. Coils in fishline and twine are called hanks. The two ends
are stopped at opposite sides of the coil. Broken coils of rope in
chandleries are stopped in the same way, but in several places.
3084. After woolen yarn is wound into a long skein it is twisted
hard with the hands, the two ends are brought together and one end
is tucked a short way through the other. When the ends are released
the material lays itself up as pictured. A hank may be several skeins
tied up together, or it may be a series of connected and uniform
short lengths of a single line, wound as in * 3085. When so made, the
purchaser may buy the length required without the necessity of
rewinding or measuring.
3085. When making punch mats or long sinnets a sailor makes up
his foxes or nettles into small hanks that are first wound in S turns
around the thumb and finger of one hand and then have frapping
turns added. These are more easily disposed of, while working, than
long loose ends. The third drawing shows a way of holding a hank,
while working, with an easily adjustable hitch.
3086. The ordinary method of disposing of a coil at sea. A right-
hand coil is hung directly over a pin and jammed down firmly. The
end is left a little longer than the coil. The turns of a coil should be
started next the pin and concluded at the end of the rope. If the end
is coiled first the rope will kink.
[ 5 I 2 ]
