[drivingpairs] Chariot subject again!

Greetings, all--

As usual, I've been busy, with ponies and otherwise. 
My wheelwright called me the other day and told me he
wants to go ahead with the chariot project, because
he's being bombarded with Carriage Association of
America inquiries, and he will have enough business
from them to keep him busy for the next couple of
years.  He reminded me that he does not even need to
advertise anymore!  He built the wheels on John
Seabrook's "Nimrod," which sold at that auction a few
months ago for $238.000.  Apparently word got round
from the auction, recommending him, and now he's
(pleasantly) flooded!

Oh, how fortunate it is that I live near Colonial
Williamsburg!  He (Karl Gayer) retired from there and
is happily taking care of clients out of his personal
shop in his garage in Williamsburg!

So he and his wife plan to come over this Sunday so we
can talk specific measurements and so forth.  I've
also been in touch with the gentleman in the December
Mischka Driving Horse calendar with the Fjord and the
hand-carved sleigh; if you look at the picture, you'll
see that the "saddle" consists of an interesting
wooden half-yoke, much like what I need for... you got
it, the chariot.  So it's all pretty exciting to think
about.

I also want to figure a way to do a four-abreast
hitch. The Learning Channel had a series on "Ancient
Arsenals" and did a story on Assyrian chariots.  They
jumped right into the business of a neck yoke, as if
the January special on chariot racing had never
existed (you know, the one that said that "no one has
ever seen a chariot before... so we don't know what
they really looked like, and no research has ever been
done on the subject...")  Personally, I suspect some
historians probably contacted the BBC and chewed them
out for saying such stupid things!  Suddenly they had
SEVERAL reknowned historians discussing the art of
chariot warfare!  

At any rate, in this program, they did a two-horse
hitch, with a neck yoke (I'll have a dorsal yoke). 
They also struggled with a four-horse neck yoke, which
failed terribly.  It was really neat to see the
experiments, because the failure of the four-horse
gave them some serious insight.  They had struggled to
bend one long piece of wood into the four little "m"
shaped arches.  They had trouble with the wood failing
and snapping during the bending process.  I have to
imagine that in real life, they could not have
afforded the trial-and-error attempts to get a long
piece of wood bent just-so, especially out in the
field during war.  There HAD to be another way.

Of course, in the movies like Ben-Hur, they simply
used a modern pole with a crab, and attached the
horses to each other's hybrid neck/breast collars in
front.  Then they used a big long splinter bar by
which the four horses pulled the vehicle with their
traces.  But my research has shown that chariots did
not have singletrees or traces.  They were pulled
solely by the yoke and a breast collar.  Some artwork
indicates a sort of trace on the outside two horses in
the 4-abreast, apparently solely to keep the outside
horses from simply turning around and going in
different directions.  This is exactly what happened
in the Assyrian experiment TV show, with just the long
neck yoke and simple breast collars.

So we shall see.  I am thinking that some sort of
singletree-type of convertible attachment could set me
up to put four at once.

I've also talked to the saddlery repair guy (about a
mile from my house!) about making the chariot
harnesses.  They will be exceedingly simple.

Laura
Virginia





=====
"My furs are not in storage or draped across the bed, 
They're hanging from the cage door, waiting to be fed." 

Remember:   STUPIDITY IS A SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASE!

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
http://photos.yahoo.com/
_________________________________________________________
To Unsubscribe, change to Digest or Vacation mode go to: 
http://www.drivingpairs.com/dpmem.html
`````````````````````````````````````````````````````````

Other related posts: