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Munin
Two headed horse


"Never a whit should one blame another
for a folly which many befalls;
the might of love makes sons of men
into fools who once were wise."

Håvamål   92
Lessons for Lovers

Ship petroglyph

Hull Construction Materials List



The hull of our 40' Gokstad replica was made primarily from fir. The planking was Douglas Fir, a large growing softwood native to the Pacific North West. In appearance, Douglas Fir—just fir for short—is very similar in appearance to a pine, which is common throughout the great northern arboreal belt spanning North America, Europe and Asia.

Many other wood species can be used for planking—we considered red cedar—but as we found a great source of Douglas Fir, the decision was easy in our case. Douglas Fir is a structurally stronger wood—although heavier—than the Western Red Cedar so we were quite happy with our fir.

The interior pieces such as "bites" (Old Norse term for cross members you can think of as deck beams), knees and floors were mostly made from fir as well with some yellow cedar here and there.

The Viking ships did not have elaborate decks. Obviously they needed some sort of footing to move around on and so built rudimentary decks low in the hull. These decks were not caulked and in some ships we know the planking was not even fastened.

In our case, we used whatever we could lay our hands on for the decking. We were looking for donations and ended up with a bit of a variety. Given what is most readily available here on the West coast, we used a lot of fir or cedar. Cedar is nice for interiors because it's lighter where structural strength is less important.

Here is the list of the boat lumber we calculated we needed:

Part

Dimensions

Keel

1 piece 4"x8"x30' or
2 pieces 4"x8"x16'

Front forefoot

1 piece 4"x12"x8'

Aft lower stem

1 piece 4"x12"x8'

Fore and aft upper stem

2 pieces 4"x12"x6'

Keelson

2 pieces 4"x6"x20'

Sub-total

272 board feet

Bites, knees, floors

10 pieces 3"x8"x10'

10 pieces 2"x6"x6'

Sub-total

260 board feet

Hull planking

1,500 linear feet 11/4'x10"
random board stock

Total for hull

1,500 linear feet 11/4"x10'

532 board feet heavy stock

Fasteners

A shocking amount of galvanized or copper boat rivets—probably about 2000 or so.
About 100 trenails—at least 6" long of 1" round stock with tapered shoulders to 3/4" shank.
Galvanized boat nails for garboard seam and stem and stern.


Oars, rudder, spars are extra and not covered in the above materials list. We did the project in stages and the specifications for the remaining pieces of the puzzle were worked out along the way.

We believed that the hull was the foundation piece of the whole project. The hull construction was what would make the project tangible to others and what our progress would be judged by. Logistically, it was also the most complicated because of the space required to build it, the skills involved and the fact that we would have nothing really worthwhile to show for our efforts until the thing was launched (and proven to float).

In essence, launching a hull is pretty much a guarantee that a project like this will be a success. Even though we knew that the hull represented only about half the cost and effort on the way to a fully functional ship. (This is a good rule of thumb for most vessel construction projects).

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