drilling | The RELIANCE Project

It’s been a very busy weekend…

Saturday was a whirlwind. Laura was splicing halyard pennants; these are wires spliced into a circle in an endless loop. She unravels a piece of wire 7x the length of the loop, then re-braids the wire as you would a grommet. Unfortunately, her day ended before I could take a picture.

Mike brought alot of hardware from Harrison Casting; you can see seven half-round angle irons on the gaff.

We’ve started to file and shape these to take eye-spliced ends of the peak halyard span wires. Another picture shows the angle irons to hold eye-spliced loops of the forestay, upper main shrouds, preventers, and throat halyard. We’ve started to grind, file, and persuade these into shape. You can also see that work continues the spreader.

Burr dropped off three new turnbuckles with incredible eyes. These and three other turnbuckles he delivered earlier have been shipped off to a local machining center to drill out slots typical of Herreshoff Manufacturing Co. turnbuckles. We can’t wait for this to be done so we can nickel plate them. They’re a critical path for rigging the bowsprit and mast!!!

Bill also stopped by and brought another 12′ of sail track for the boom. This has been provided by our friends: the Wrights at AMA Engineering.

Our Roger Williams University intern Zach created our new “Wonderfully Modern Herreshoff Manufacturing Co.” exhibit from lecture material given earlier this year by the team.

And of course Zach and Sandy spent a lot of time sprucing up Building 28 for opening day on Sunday. RELIANCE is really looking great and we’re hoping our new exhibits will excite you as well.

We continued with our drilling of three holes through the keel these last few days. Through these holes we’ll insert three rods which form the internal cradle support. The rods will be braced in “donuts” attached to new thwart-ship beams just below the deck.

We started on Tuesday last week by ensuring everything was aligned and ready to go. By the end of the day we had drilled the forward hole and had started the middle hole. By end of work session on Saturday we’d completed the middle hole and were 6″ into the aft hole. Last Tuesday we completed drilling and cut out the deck and cleared internal structures so the rods could be inserted to their full length.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll construct the deck-level thwart-ship beams and donuts and lock the rods in place. Once that is accomplished, RELIANCE will go back into her builder’s cradle and we’ll complete all the under-deck tasks such as:
– Installing the mast step
– Installing sheaves and cleats for through-deck halyards and sheets
– Fastening key deck fittings and chain plates as required

Hopefully, she’ll be back in her working cradle before Thanksgiving!