Elm is perfect for pipes as it's hard to split (so presumably easier to bore out without breaking) and when kept wet - as here - it's resistant to rot. Elm was widely used in boatbuilding for hard-wearing and continuously damp/wet parts - including pipes for bilge pumps and the bottom of barges. - ThreadSky

dreadships.bsky.social • 3 days ago

Elm is perfect for pipes as it's hard to split (so presumably easier to bore out without breaking) and when kept wet - as here - it's resistant to rot.

Elm was widely used in boatbuilding for hard-wearing and continuously damp/wet parts - including pipes for bilge pumps and the bottom of barges.

Reposted from Liz Anderson

The Thames always comes up with the perfect metaphor for the state of everything right now. So please enjoy these stunning 15th/16th century sewage pipes. Made of elm & preserved by the tides, these would have once deposited the shit & piss of medieval & post medieval Londoners into the Thames 1/

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cageyratfish.bsky.social•3 days ago

Wow!!

gnomeicide.bsky.social•3 days ago

It also bends well when boiled in steam, so its great for curved backs of chairs. So considering how well it then survives in wetter environments a heck of a lot of the antique kitchen chairs you see are elm.

martocticvs.bsky.social•2 days ago

There was the elm tree pump in ships for a while, literally made from the hollowed out trunk of an elm tree

vogonpoetry.live•2 days ago

They found still useful 100 year old wooden pipes in the water system where I grew up during a pipe replacement project. They were in better shape then the more modern pipes connected to them.

cadencecivet.bsky.social•2 days ago

Reminds me that one of our main siphons under a body of water is basically an old pair of wood staves, albeit lined with concrete!

Still going strong!

fcd520.bsky.social•3 days ago

Can confirm, it’s an absolute bastard to split! Chopped up a pile that came from casualties of Dutch elm disease ☹️

dreadships.bsky.social•3 days ago

Grain goes everywhere, I've been told?

fcd520.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yep, grain isn’t very straight to begin with and then it seems to have a real resistance to splitting through some form of cross graining that isn’t readily visible. I’ll never forget beating doubled steel wedges into rounds to get them to fully split. One wedge was never enough!

rjbarker.bsky.social•3 days ago

In Master and Commander Stephan Maturin is quite disconsolate when the Sophie's elm tree pump is destroyed and he can no longer look down it into the sea.

lizanderson.bsky.social•3 days ago

Lovely. Thank you 🙏 (though a shame these beautiful trees were later decimated by Dutch Elm disease, but not sure when this first struck here.)

dreadships.bsky.social•3 days ago

Late 1960s. BUT there have been suspicious reductions in elm pollen during the Stone Age that might reflect previous outbreaks (humans have also been implicated for that one though, and it's likely many factors working together)

andyelms.bsky.social•2 days ago

According to local archaeologists, Elm was used in Bristol for the medieval fresh water pipes.

Which is a much nicer association than, er, waste products

spodulike.bsky.social•3 days ago

Wooden narrowboat rudders are often called the 'ellum' 🧐

dreadships.bsky.social•3 days ago

Absolutely unsurprised it'd be used for rudders. Constantly wet and needs to withstand knocks. Cheaper than oak etc too, which for commercial boats was likely a consideration.

spodulike.bsky.social•3 days ago

I didn't realise that it was cheaper than oak back then. I read that due to its resistance to splitting it was often used for turned wooden bowls, and for making (bodging😄) Windsor type chair seats where the holes drilled for the legs and backrest would often split in other woods.

dreadships.bsky.social•3 days ago

It was amazingly plentiful compared to oak, at least in some places - I can remember the old rotting stumps lining the hedgerows of my village as a kid, killed by elm disease

spodulike.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yes, so sad. Plenty of elm left in the hedgerows though, they can spread by suckers and when the trunk reaches a certain girth apparently the cracks in the bark become big enough to accommodate the infected beetles and the sapling dies, hopefully after suckering. There may be hope yet🤞

dreadships.bsky.social•3 days ago

Yeah, they do still exist as small trees, though modern flail cutters etc must be reducing the amount springing back up (as well as other saplings that might previously have been left)

My mother used to work on the genetics of disease resistance in elm, which is partly why I noticed them so much.

covertshores.bsky.social•3 days ago

Someone left a log

one0nine.bsky.social•2 days ago

This is sincerely interesting - I had no idea elm had such properties. I accidentally learned something new today!

dreadships.bsky.social•2 days ago

Elm is one of the few I remember, but there's an incredible amount of knowledge and experience tied up in the traditional uses of various woods, in ships and elsewhere. I find it fascinating - glad I'm not alone!

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