Protecting the Cutwater

[Courtesy Naval History & Heritage Command Detachment Boston]

By USS Constitution Museum | Current Work, Restoration | 5 comments | 10 December, 2015 | 1

The materials used in rebuilding and restoring USS Constitution span from 45-foot-long, 12,000 pound white oak trees to three-inch copper pins. Currently, Stephen Nichols, blacksmith for the Naval History & Heritage Command Detachment Boston, is finishing the last of 468 hand-made copper pins that will hold protective bronze plates to the forward edge of Constitution‘s cutwater.

Stephen Nichols works in a purpose-built blacksmith shop near USS Constitution in the Charlestown Navy Yard. [Courtesy Naval History & Heritage Command Detachment Boston]

For this project, Stephen uses a 100-ton hydraulic press, specially made dies, and an acetylene torch to form copper rods into finished pins. The rods must be heated to 1700 degrees Fahrenheit, just short of the melting point, to render them malleable.

An acetylene torch is used to heat copper rods to 1700 degrees Fahrenheit. Stephen can tell the approximate temperature by the color of the metal as it heats up. [Courtesy Naval History & Heritage Command Detachment Boston]

Stephen made the dies for the copper pins from two pieces of heavy gauge steel. The dies are counter-sunk so that the head of the pin becomes flared by the force of the hydraulic press.

As the hydraulic press lifts, the headed pin is released from the die. [Courtesy Naval History & Heritage Command Detachment Boston]

The headed pins are temporarily stored in a box before the final steps of the process. In the end, Stephen will have made 468 nearly four-inch copper pins.

A box of newly headed copper pins. [Courtesy Naval History & Heritage Command Detachment Boston]

Once the pins have cooled, Stephen uses the hydraulic press to taper the ends and then uses an angle sheer to cut the tips into points. It is important that the tips are cold-pressed so as to harden the soft copper, rendering the pins strong enough to be driven into the oak cutwater of Constitution‘s bow.

Three copper pins showing the first two stages of manufacture. The pin on the left is headed. The two pins on the right show the cold-pressed tips before they are cut into points. [Courtesy Naval History & Heritage Command Detachment Boston]

A series of large molded bronze plates are fitted around the forward edge of Constitution‘s cutwater. These plates cover the edge of the cutwater from below the billet head to the turn of the keel and protect this vulnerable, projecting bow structure. A dozen or more copper pins hold each plate in place. The red arrow in the photo below points to an area below the waterline where the old copper pins have been removed from a bronze plate. The plate above that area has already been removed. Once removed, the bronze plates are cleaned and prepped to be reinstalled on the cutwater later on in the restoration.

This view below the waterline shows the beginning of the cutwater restoration in the summer of 2015. [Courtesy Naval History & Heritage Command Detachment Boston]

Constitution will leave Dry Dock 1 in the late summer or early autumn of 2017. The work on the cutwater will be complete, including the reinstallation of the protective bronze plates with the new copper pins.

USS Constitution‘s cutwater, as seen in 2009. [Courtesy Naval History & Heritage Command Detachment Boston]

-M. M. Desy & K. Monea

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John Dupee Reply December 14, 2015 at 9:54 am

Why is the Cutwater not referred to as the Stem?
- Josh Ratty Reply December 14, 2015 at 8:47 pm
  
  https://ussconstitutionmuseum.org/2015/08/05/cutwater/
  
  There is a good sketch in this blog post showing that the cut-water protrudes from the stem and is in fact a separate piece.
- USS Constitution Museum Reply December 15, 2015 at 8:55 am
  
  Good question, John. Below are the definitions as found in “Falconer’s New Universal Dictionary of the Marine”, edited by William Burney (1815):
  
  “STEM, …a piece of timber, into which the two sides of the ship are united at the fore end; the lower end [of the stem] is scarfed to the keel, and the bowsprit rests upon the upper end. The stem is formed of one or two pieces, according to the size of the vessel; and as it terminates the ship forward, the ends of the wales [thick hull planks] and plank of the sides and bottom are let into a groove or channel, in the middle of [the stem’s] surface, from the top to the bottom: which operation is called rabbetting. The outside of the stem is usually marked with a scale of feet, according to its perpendicular height from the keel.. Its use is to ascertain the draughts of water at the fore part, when the ship is in preparation for a sea-voyage, etc.”
  
  “CUT-WATER, Knee of the Head, is the foremost part of a ship’s prow, formed of an assemblage of several pieces of timber, to render it broad at the upper-part, where it projects forward from the stem to open the column of water as the ship sails along…”
  
  In other words, the stem is the structural vertical timber (itself possibly made up of several pieces to make the whole) that creates the terminus for the bow of the vessel.
  
  The cutwater is forward of the stem and is additional timber that adds little to the structural integrity of the vessel, but is advantageous to the hull design as it eases the vessel through the water in better fashion – this would be important where the vessel’s speed was paramount; or for a large vessel such as Constitution. For instance, small, oar-powered boats have stems, but do not have, nor do they need cutwaters, given the nature and use of the row-boat.
Dean Winterton Reply December 14, 2015 at 3:04 pm

Please ask CMDR Sean Kearns if any relatives lived in Riderwood Md … Thnx
Capt. Wm. Dowd Reply June 11, 2016 at 9:29 am

Great answer Constitution Museum