Meanwhile I bought a lot of copper nails of the requisite length and rooves to match, with the use of which I had become thoroughly familiar from watching the men in the boat-shop hard by.
Then I began operations, aided by an apprentice from the boat-builder's establishment whom I induced, by the proffer of pocket money, to turn out of his bed at dawn and lend me a hand till the clang of the bell summoned him to his daily toil. We replaced all the rivets that had worked very loose with new ones of a larger size, and drove an additional nail between every two originally driven. The old nails, which were only a little slack, I hardened with a few taps of the hammer from the inside, while Toby, the afore-mentioned apprentice, "held on" against the heads of the nails with another hammer on the outside. This was slow and tedious work, but it paid in the long run, for it made the boat almost as good as new, her frames, as I have already mentioned, being in capital condition.
My next operation was to borrow a pitch-kettle from the boat shop and to put in it a pound of pitch and a gallon of North Carolina tar. Kindling a fire under it I let it boil until the pitch had melted, stirring it constantly. This mixture I applied boiling hot to the inside of the boat with a paint-brush, filling every crevice and ledge up to the level of the underside of the thwarts. It was astonishing what a quantity of this composition the planks absorbed. I put only half a ladleful of the tar into my paint-pot at a time, so that it should not stand long enough to cool, replenishing every few minutes from the boiling kettle. Tar when at the boiling point is comparatively thin, and has superior penetrative qualities, so it can be worked with the point of the brush into every crevice, no matter how minute. When it hardens it forms a water-tight seam which possesses, from the nature of its ingredients, a certain amount of elasticity.
There were a number of sun-cracks in the planking, which I filled with fish glue, run in hot from the outside. This composition dries very hard and does not crack. My next task was to sandpaper the outside, smoothing the very rough places with pumice-stone after wetting them well. I ached all over by the time this process was completed but I got her as smooth as glass. Then I gave her outside a couple of good coats of raw linseed oil applied on a hot day. As a finish, not caring to waste money on varnish, I gave her a final coat of boiled linseed oil, in which a generous lump of rosin had been melted. This is the mixture used from time immemorial by the Dutch on the bottoms and topsides of their galliots, and it wears well and looks well, resisting the action of both fresh and salt water. I may say that this method of making my boat water-tight was economical and successful. The example may be followed with similar results by anybody who owns a leaky lapstreak craft.