Wasn’t that long ago in human history that hardware had to be handmade. Nails, door hinges, coathooks—every metal component of every building, buggy, or boat was the product of someone’s individual craftsmanship.

Nobody in right mind craves to go back to the crepuscular days before machine production. Yet, occasionally when we do, by choice, it’s a revelation.

I was having no luck finding chainplates for Nil Desperandum. Chainplates are the bronze or stainless steel straps that bolt to the hull as attachment points for the shrouds, or guy wires, that support the mast. The big Seattle chandlery, Fisheries Supply, had a few, but the version that came closest to the specs for my Devlin Winter Wren were heavy and ugly and $92 apiece. The 21st century’s most dazzling technology—a Google foray in search of used chainplates—failed, for once.

But we have an amazing concentration of  oddball artisans here on Whidbey Island, and this past year a small sign for a business called Renaissance Metal Shop had gone up on a rural road a mile from my house. I made a scale drawing of the chainplates I envisioned and dropped in. “No problem,” said metal artist John Moritz, and later in the week I brought him a scrap of silicon bronze I had picked up in Seattle.

Two days later my chainplates were ready. They were, in a word, beautiful. “I hope it’s all right that they look handmade.” Moritz said, a tint of worry in his voice. “Of course,” I said. “The whole boat is handmade.”

In a provocative little book titled The Nature and Art of Workmanship published 40 years ago, British industrial designer David Pye laid out a distinction between what he called the “workmanship of  risk” and the “workmanship of certainty.” While not damning mass production, Pye said it is so important to keep the workmanship of risk alive—the crafting of things by hand, where the quality of the production depends on the artisan’s experience, skill, and values—that it goes right to the heart of civilization itself.

I polished and drilled Moritz’s chainplates and installed them on the hull—with bronze bolts, of course, and on the outside, instead of hidden inside like the chainplates on modern production sailboats.

A whole convergence of fine things have happened here. I saved money myself, while contributing to our island economy. Nil Desperandum acquired a bit of functional jewelry that’s entirely in keeping with her character. The structural necessity of chainplates will be outside, in plain view, and it’ll be like seeing physics tangibly at work on the boat, the loads on the mast flowing down into the structure of the hull.

In other December work, I decided that instead of painting the inside of the hull I would finish it with a plank ceiling—which in boatspeak is the hull’s interior walls, not the cabin roof.

It’s painstaking work. I have to resaw vertical-grain fir into ¼-inch-thick planks and fit each one individually, then screw it onto vertical strips I’ve glued inside the hull. All these planks will be removable, of course, in case work on the hull ever becomes necessary (tightening the chainplate bolts, for example).

The photo here shows the ceiling in place from the deck beam to the aft cabin bulkhead. It’s not finished yet. In January I’ll remove the planks piece by piece for improved fitting, beveling the edges, and varnishing. And then I’ll plank from the deck beam forward to the anchor locker bulkhead.

Is the extra cost and labor worth it? I think so. When I sit in what will become the cabin, there’s a tangible sensation of warmth and welcome from the natural wood grain that just wouldn’t be there in a painted enclosure.

It’s just like the slight randomness of the metal artist’s handmade chainplates. I think that in certain contexts—a Boeing 737 at 35,000 feet, for example—we’re reassured by the precision of perfect, machine-made environments. But in others, we have an intrinsic craving for connections to the natural world, which is something we’ve almost lost. Varnished wood, with the infinite variety of grain patterns, establishes one connection. A handmade sailboat, if it works right, is a connection to the full spectrum of nature’s cycles.

In January: Work will alternate between finishing the ceiling and building the mast tabernacle—like the chainplates, a beefy bit of structure. A lesson I’ve learned in boatbuilding is to alternate repetitive tasks like planking the ceiling with something entirely different. When work on one project threatens to stall because it’s tedious work, there’s an alternative that preserves forward progress.

Tags: boatbuilding, chainplates, devlin, winter wren, wooden boat

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