In the last post about the production of the forestay, we left off just as Carsten had finished making the eye splice. He finished the splice by hammering the eye firmly around a large wooden fid, ensuring all the fibres lay evenly and snugly. The remaining length of the third cord was still wound around the wooden pin and waiting patiently to be laid over the existing two cords.
He then took up the pin again and began laying the third cord. This required a little more muscle-power than before as this length was (unintentionally) ever so slightly thicker than the other two cords, and therefore needed a little extra persuasion to lie as it should. The technique was still the same however: the pin was passed over and under the two-ply rope and the cord carefully laid in the rest position among the existing twists.
As often happens when working with craft, the third cord proved to be just 20cm too short. This is no problem when working with lime bast though – Carsten was able to just insert new fibres into the end of the cord and spin as much length as was needed, laying the cord in place as he worked down towards the end of the rope.
As he reached the end of the rope, he gave the third cord a final twist around the loop at the end before inserting the cord through the loop. There is no need to tie any kind of knot – the twists within the cords will automatically hold themselves in place.
It was then time to stretch the rope. Lime bast has a lot of give in it as a material, and it’s important to get the rope to ‘stretch’ before it ends up on the boat as rigging. Carsten placed the eye of the forestay over a metal spike sunk into the ground outside the Viking Ship Hall and laid the rest of the rope on the grass. He then bound the loose end of the rope to a hook attached to a pulley block. The ropes attached to the block were then carefully tightened until Carsten felt that the tension was sufficient. The forestay measured 4.65m when Carsten finished laying the rope, and once it was set under tension, it had already stretched to nearly 5m.
The forestay was then left under tension overnight and removed the next day. It’s final length clocked in at 5.2m.
