A First Peek at the Finished Thule Harpoons

I got the harpoons done after all. I'm so happy to have them done and off my mind during the holidays. We have dinner today with Lori's parents and then I'm taking a week or two break from the computer. I set up a few scheduled posts, so there will still be new content on the blog over the Holidays, but I won't be back writing again until January. I'll do a longer post then explaining the Thule Harpoons. They're pretty amazing machines and there are so many little stories to tell that I need to do a bunch of good photos and explain how the parts all work.



But maybe you can tell from the photos what's going on. Can you figure out why the foreshaft is laced on that way? What's the function of that little sharks fin halfway down the mainshaft and is that black plastic holding them on? Why is the line stretched tight -- isn't the harpoon head supposed to slip off in the prey? Why are there two holes on the tension piece attached to the line?



Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Photo Captions:
First: The finished Thule harpoon heads, foreshafts, sockets, lashings and lines
Second: Two Thule Harpoon reproductions
Third: The line running from the harpoon heads to the middle of the shaft is kept taught.
Fourth: There are whalebone tension pieces sewn to the lines with sinew to keep the line tight.