Serving mallets GAoP period?

[MorganTyre]

I know that the serving mallet is a standard of traditional rigging these days but does anyone know when the "modern" form of the tool was developed or was service applied with spikes or some sort of serving board arrangement during the period in question?

[Patrick Hand]

Dang..... I don't know if it's/they are period or not, they had to use something......

This will be fun to find someone that does know........

[Red Dog]

Excelent inquiry, off to me books!

[Red Dog]

just a note, I haven't found any change significant in the the mallet from the GAOP and today. Mostly just construction material

[MorganTyre]

Does the type with the spool go that far back? At what point was the spool added? I know at one point it was a two-man job with an apprentice passing a ball of twine around the service but I'm not sure how far back that was.

[Captain Bob]

When I first viewed this topic, the term "serving mallet" inspired my imagination. I envisioned some guy in sailor's togs wearing a chef's hat and swinging an oversized sledgehammer to keep the crew outta the grub before it was ready to eat.

I figured that eventually someone would describe both the appearance and function of a serving mallet, and I patiently waited to see what it was. It's been a couple of months now and I am still no wiser. Would someone please tell me what serving mallets are?

[Red Dog]

Hi folks, I found a site that shows two different types of serving mallets and a brief description of their use:

Please check:

nautical repair equipment

near the bottom of the page

The use I'm familiar with is to worm, parcel and serve a splice in ropes, cable, ect.

Worming was to lay a small filler cord into the grooves on a larger cable or rope to give a more even, round size and eliminate pockets between the parceling and the cable.

Parceling was when tarred paper or canvas strips were wrapped around the cable securing the worming. this was done much like wrapping electrical cables with vinyl tape.

Serving was to wrap the entire length of the splice with a smaller cord to secure everything else and add strength to the splice.

worm and parcel with the lay, but always serve the other way.

[JohnnyTarr]

This is my favorite part of this whole site. I hope that someday that I will have half of the knowledge of sailing and pirates that you all have here.

[Red Dog]

I fully agree, my limmited knowledge comes from questions that I research the answers to. Internet, books, movies, ect.

I still can't seem to locate the timeline for the question posed here though. but so far I can guestimate that it happened later in the 19th century. That seems to be the time the design was modified to incorperate the internal spool to eliminate the the need for a second man to tend to the loose spool of cord.

still workin' on it