Nails and Roves

When Basil Brown's famous excavation at Sutton Hoo was completed in 1939, it was perhaps no surprise that the fabulous ship-burial treasures revealed in Mound One took centre stage. That beautifully decorated helmet and the garnet-encrusted jewellery have since become icons of Anglo-Saxon craftsmanship.

And yet, one of the most significant finds, with immense implications for constructional archaeology, was a host of humble iron nails, still joined to their washers. Like a giant join-the-dots diagram, they clearly delineated the position of the ship's planking, long since rotted away.

These are what every ship and boat builder now knows as nails and roves: an extremely sturdy and adaptable fastening that essentially rivets two planks of wood together, creating an effective—or almost effective—watertight joint.

I have a lovely seventeenth-century boat rib with its verdigris-patinated copper nail and rove still clinging on, long after the rest of the hull had disappeared.

Boat planking was also joined using the familiar clenched nail, and I once owned a little wooden sailing boat built with this simpler (and presumably cheaper) fastening; it was a pretty little thing. Better-built boats, however, generally had their laps fastened with nails and roves. Ironically, I had one of those too, but it sank on its very first outing... I only had it for a short time!

The process of rove nailing is fairly straightforward. The two pieces to be joined are pre-drilled, a nail is tapped through, and the tightly fitting rove is slid over the end of the nail. The nail is then cut, just proud of the rove, leaving only enough to be peened over with a ball-peen hammer.

A set is also a handy tool to have—essentially a wedge-shaped piece of iron with a cupped depression and a hole at one end. The hole is used to drive the tight rove firmly over the nail with the aid of a hammer, while the cupped face helps maintain the dome of the rove during the final shaping, again using a hammer.

You can still buy copper nails and roves—they remain very popular with classic boat-building enthusiasts. The image below shows two pieces of green ash edge-jointed with a modern copper nail and rove. I've bisected the joint to show just how effective it is as a green-wood fastening. You can just make out the highly compressed joint and where the cut nail has been peened over the rove using a hammer and set.

I think, sooner rather than later, I'll be constructing a cleft-panel basket using copper nails and roves. It's such a beautifully functional fastening, it's inevitable!