Building a boat-hull Boeotian

[Kineas]

But nothing is ever quite as easy as it seems.

I was measuring my 85% complete shield for a porpax and discovered that the porpax goes right in the middle--not on either side of the middle. So I had to add a new support--I steam bent it myself in ten minutes. Of much lighter wood, and Oh, that was a painful lesson. I've over-built this as to weight. Everything could have been much lighter.

However, one thing Aurora and I have constantly asked ourselves is why the original porpakes--especially those from Olympia--have dozens of tiny nail holes that runn all along the "decorative" brass supporting band--instead of a couple of heavy rivets at the base of the porpax where it takes the strain when it is on your arm.

BUT--it suddenly came to me today that if you have a boat-hull construction and the "keel" runs UNDER the porpax, then every pair of holes would provide you with tiny rivets or nails going THROUGH the keel and into the "planks" which would run across the keel--a different design from this one, but one I'm now convinced would work better. Sometimes I can only learn by doing.

Here's the new cross "beam.'



Next--the rawhide...in the tub even now.