Schooner gaskets

The usual term is "mast hoops."  (Not to be confused with mast bands, which are iron parts permanently secured to the mast in various locations and for various purposes.)  In the days of wood ships (and considerably thereafter), mast hoops were made of wood, steamed, bent, and riveted at the joint.  (If I remember right, one of the buildings at Mystic Seaport is (or used to be) a mast hoop maker's shop.)

Bluejacket offers laser-cut mast hoops made from thin plywood.  Nice, but kind of heavy - especially in smaller scales.

The old, traditional way to make model mast hoops is to start with some thin pine shavings from a plane.  Soak them in water, smear them with glue, and wrap them around an appropriately-sized dowel (which you've wrapped first with wax paper).  Wrap another piece of wax paper around the result, and hold the whole mess tight with rubber bands.  When it's dried into a thin-walled cylinder, slice it into thin bands.

I've had success with paper, sliced from heavy yellow envelopes.  (One of them will make enough mast hoops to last you the rest of your life.)  A drop of white glue on the end, and a mandrel of the appropriate size, makes the hoop.  A touch of wood stain gives it the right color.

The mast hoops have to go over the masthead early in the rigging process - before the crosstrees.  I read somewhere that some ships put a few extra hoops on the stack, to avoid the nuisance that would happen if one broke.  The sail has grommets sewn in the appropriate locations, in the hem of the sail just inside the boltrope. Lashings hold the grommets to the mast hoops.  

When the sail is furled, if the rig has a fixed gaff, the mast hoops stay with the sail; if the sail is removed they fall into a stack at the bottom.  If the rig has a hoisting gaff (like both masts on a typical Gloucester schooner), the gaff is lowered to furl the sail, and the mast hoops wind up at the bottom - still secured to the sail.  The sail usually falls in such a way that the edge flops into an accordian shape, with the canvas folding alternately to port and starboard.  It's a neat effect to reproduce on a model.

Again, I highly recommend the old movie "Captains Courageous."  (In fact it gets my vote as my favorite seafaring movie of all those I've seen.)  At various points in that movie you can see lots of standard evolutions in working the schooner rig.  I watched it for about the 30th time a couple of nights ago; it's worth freezing frames and studying them.  It has scarcely anything to do with the Kipling novel; practically nothing survived except the names of the characters (including the ship).  To my notion that's not much of a defect; the book isn't one of Kipling's greatest, and the screenwriters' additions actually make the story more interesting.  It's worth noting that the story gets updated to the 1930s.  The sailors of Kipling's age wouldn't have recognized the schooners in the movie - much less the cars on the streets in various scenes.   

The flick is available for a reasonable price on DVD:  www.barnesandnoble.com/.../3622889 .  Note the cheaper used copies; there probably are others elsewhere on the web.

Hope that helps a little.

"Set the foresail" must have been an interesting experience when someone let the "leash" go on that tie-up.

I spent a lot of afternoons lashing down the main sail on various single masted sailboats.

Back-and-forth, hold it up and lash it onto the boom with a big length of elastic cord.

Lets talk about sail hoops. My various pictures show a wood spline bent around the mast and spliced with a bolt or two. Theres a clew or border rope up the front edge of the sail that gets lashed to each hoop. The hoops live on the mast. correct?

Bluejacket at al sell sets of the things. I am currently working on the spars of the America and need to figure this out. I would rather make the things as otherwise where does modeling end and accessorizing start?

Years & years go--decades, really--down to Caribbean, I saw a three-masted gaff schooner tarted up as a would-be barquentine in 'pirate' guise (couple yards set flying from fore topmast and white stripe on black hull with 'gunports' [eyeroll].

Was some astounding details on that schooner.    Like the deadeyes.  Which were set up at either end of a rigging screw, with a lanyard for "show."  Skinny wire stays with puddings on the fore & aft 'shrouds" and bolted-on wood "ratlines" spoilt the effect a tad, up close.

As did the furling technique.

By all appearances, the first reef was hauled in, and bent on under the boom.  But, only every other reef point.  rest of the sail was haphazardly flopped over the reef & boom, and under the lowered gaff, and then "gasketed" by using the remaining reef points.

Oh, and the foremast gaff was fixed, so that sail was brailed to the mast, the fore boom tipped up, cargo boom style, to the vertical along side that.

Someone else sent me a picture of a schooner with sails furled that seems to show a "gasket", as a single line wrapped spirally around boom, gaff and sail starting at mast and working around the bundle out to end.  So I have my answer now. It is a long line and was apparently stowed and brought out when needed.

This topic has managed to dredge up half a memory.  That Howard Chappell talked about different forms of schooner gaskets.  Of course, nothing definite, nor of which tome specifically the comment occurs--could be American Boat, or Sailing Vessels, or i could be misremembering.

I also have a memory of a comment about some commercial schooners getting a plank fitted across the boom to better shake reefs in and out on working vessels.

All of which nags at me, as, back in 2010, I'd just go the 2.3 miles to the Evans Library and go into the V's where they had a full collection of HIC to go peruse to scratch such academic itches.  Such is life.

Thank you Don.

Have to review my pictures. Don't have any of GL schooners but a bunch of cod boats.

I reread CC a couple of weeks ago.

It's a fine book and the descriptions of dory operation are quite detailed.

I haven't seen the movie but it's on my list.

I can't comment specifically on Great Lakes vessels, which may quite possibly have had some unusual rigging for such gear.  But normally a gasket is secured more-or-less permanently around the spar to which the sail is furled.

In photos of old sailing ships you often can see (if you look close) little coils of light rope hanging from a yard, in front of the sail.  Those are the gaskets.  In a typical square-rigged ship they're quite long - long enough to go around the yard and the sail several times.  

One of my all-time favorite movies is "Captain's Courageous" - the 1937 version with Spencer Tracy and Lionel Barrymore.  Much of it was filmed on board a working Gloucester fishing schooner.  In several shots you can see an unusual gasket arrangement:  there are narrow strips of canvas wrapped around the sail, and the gasket lines themselves run over them.  I haven't been able to figure out whether the canvas strips are actually attached to the gaskets, or whether they're separate.  At any rate, I haven't bumped into that arrangement anyplace else.

Again, all this may be irrelevant to Great Lakes schooners.  But I suspect they used something similar.

The ropes used to hold the sails furled.  Like reef points but for gathering in  the whole sail when not using it.

What is a schooner gasket, Don?