I have decided to use rope stropped blocks on TOAD HALL; I like the period look and they are very easy to make and quiet to boot. Cheaper too!

But with rope-stropped blocks you need rope thimbles and I expect to need a LOT of blocks. TOAD is after all a gaffer and has a square rig to boot. A lot of blocks means a lot of rope thimbles. At $6.53 apiece for the 1 1/4" (that's total outside diameter) brass thimbles from SailRite (a fine company by the way) that's about $200.00 just for thimbles. (TOAD will have a working complement (including spares) of about 30 blocks).

Too much money!

Here's what I did.

I got some soft copper tubing of the size that I wanted; 3/4" ID. Then I got a large ball peen hammer, a ball peen hammer head without a handle and another large ball peen hammer.

I cut the tubing into small pieces about 1" long. (Dimensions are flexible here depending on the size of the tubing, the size of thimble intended and the size of the rope strop to be used).

I upended a piece of tubing onto the ball of the ball peen hammer head without the handle which in turn was firmly clamped down to the cast iron deck of my table saw. (You need a very firm base on which to work and next best to an anvil is my table saw deck). I placed the ball of the ball peen hammer that had a handle on top of the piece of copper tubing.

When everything was arranged I wacked the flat face of the ball peen hammer with the handle that was on top of the tubing which was on top of the ball of the ball peen hammer without a handle which was clamped to the table saw. Repeated blows with the working hammer formed the tubing into a perfect thimble.

Cost; nothing. The copper tubing was scrap. I never throw anything useful away, remember!

The sketches give you the idea.

Now, agreed, the copper is not as strong as the brass but the loads on small boats like TOAD are low and therefore I feel that these copper thimbles are as serviceable as they need to be.

Happy whacking!