Craftsmanship The new bronze age I
YARD NEWS . BOATBUILDER’S NOTES . TOOLS YACHT FITTING MAKER
Moray McPhail is a maker, and designer, of ‘the bits’ we all use when restoring and sailing our boats. By Dan Houston
t’s really only at the end of my visit to Classic Marine’s workshops, at Woodbridge in Suffolk, that I sense what it is about engineering that makes Moray McPhail tick. The rear of his workshops contains a few old boats (expected) and some old cars in a state of restoration, a teardrop-shaped caravan (he made), bikes, a 1950s Honda moped... It’s a grown man’s playroom, where the tools of his trade can be brought into, er, play. Classic Marine is like a sea tinker’s paradise. The ‘shop’ part of it contains racks and racks of bronze and high grade marine stainless-steel things; some which you recognise – snap shackles, spider bands, oil lamps – and some which you don’t – specialist fittings from one-off classic yachts are his reason for being in business. And he’s been in business since 1991. “I was fitting out an old boat myself,” he says. “And I thought, this is stupid, I can’t find the bits. I’ll set up a little place and we’ll find the bits! And it turned out that of course the bits didn’t exist – so we had to make them, and that’s how it all started 20 years ago and since then we’ve got better at it...
and the more we do the better we get and the better we get the more we do!”
From being a one-man band Moray has built the business up to be currently employing seven people. The sheds of his workshops are close to Martlesham Creek, off the River Deben – which is God’s own country for wooden boats and sailing. It’s among a few other sheds in an established plot of light engineering firms. It’s a great spot and there’s room for the various aspects of engineering that Moray offers. He used to do his own bronze casting but now brings in most of his ‘blanks’ from China. China? Is that good enough quality, how about the consistency of the metal? “It’s fine now, really, we don’t have quality problems,” he avers. Moray has to send out moulds, to China, for a range of fittings, from pillar cleats and fairleads to boathooks and stanchions. When customers restoring old boats want a pattern or part replicated – to replace the same design the
82 CLASSIC BOAT JULY 2011
boat had originally – he does that, making a mould that will be used to copy the original. This has been a useful service to purists since several designers drew their own styles of deck hardware.
“We get to see how certain designs of fittings can fail”
Classic Marine also sells standard stock. “One of the advantages of doing this for some time is that we get to see how certain designs of fittings can fail,” Moray explains. “For instance our pillar deck cleats are now an amalgam of different designs, a little sturdier where they need to be, but still elegant. Our Clyde cleats have lugs to hold the rope and stop it sawing through the wood.” We look at a repair job that has come in. It’s a beastly, twisted and torn bronze goosneck-with-belaying-pins that has come off a Howth 17. “Christ knows what they did to make it look like this!” Moray sighs. “But we’ll replace it! It’s probably beyond repair.” I ask Moray if he can do anything. He’s standing behind his centenarian Ward No1 capstan lathe, something he rescued from the Woolwich arsenal. “No, that’s putting it too kindly but we can do a lot of stuff. This is a fabulous bit
of kit – it’s just so nice to drive.” Being brought up in Lincoln (he went to school in
Winchester) Moray started sailing when he was 15 – his 1898 design Orwell Corinthian First of April, is sitting in the shed nearly ready for launch. He trained as an officer in the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors at Bath, which is what gave him his grounding (and approach) to his current calling. A stint for four years in strategic defence consultancy as part of PA Consulting was “plenty of money; not enough fun”.
The marine equipment side of his business is supplemented with architectural renovation work. He has just had an order for more than eight tonnes of bronze fittings to go into a house. But it’s his marine fittings that make him special to CB readers; if you need it, he’s got it, if not, he’ll make it!
www.classicmarine.co.uk
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100