In rec.woodworking, DerbyDad03 wrote:
On Saturday, August 15, 2020 at 8:52:48 AM UTC-4, Leon wrote:
I toured the USS Lexington, the grey ghost, when I was about 12 years
old. It is now permanently anchored where I grew up. It was still
operating at the time. I remember riding the elevator and the rush of
air that got sucked with it as it went below deck....

Anyway the ship had a full woodworking shop.

I'm curious now, but my searching for info on shipboard woodworking
shops is not giving me results, too many wood ship models flooding it.

You have to remember that these ships made battle ships look small and
had a crew that numbered in the thousands. The carriers had a large
capacity for storage. Keeping an inventory of wood on board would not
have been a big issue compared to "normal" sized ships of that era.

If you were in a battle at a time of war and your deck was damaged, you
did not go back to port to have repairs made. You had to get the
airplanes back up in the air. You worked with what you had. You did
not want to be limited to equipment that was too small for what ever
task was needed.

Thanks. Makes sense.

The most epic repair at sea story I have ever read is "McLintock's
Calcuated Risk", which was about a steamer that lost it's propeller at
sea in 1900, and the truely insane job of replacing it mid-Atlantic,
approximately half way between Cape Town and Buenos Aires, the source
and destination ports for the trip.

https://qaz.wtf/tmp/McLintockCalculatedRisk.txt

"You worked with what you had" is exactly what you do, thousands of
miles from land with your ship dead in the water because the propeller
has vanished into the murky depths in the days before shipboard radios.

Not really a story of woodworking, though.

Elijah
------
makes you wonder about the the ships without William McLintock