Restoration of HMS Warrior – Mouldings

Matching decorative mouldings for an historic warship

Variety is the spice of life, or so they say. We certainly get variety in our job. We have worked with the Royal Naval Dockyard Portsmouth for decades on HMS Victory and other projects. More recently the responsibility for historic warships in the UK has passed to National Museum of the Royal Navy.

During early 2019, we were asked by the museum team how we would go about replacing some of the decorative mouldings on the stern of HMS Warrior. We obtained samples of the profiles required. The ones requiring replacing were made in softwood and laminated horizontally. They were in a bad state of repair, being held together pretty much by the paint surrounding it.

We took a different approach and suggested to the museum team that laminating them vertically would be a better solution. Each layer of the lamination had its own profile to make up the total shape of the moulding. Each one had its own template and tooling made, and was machined using our Weinig moulder. The lamination itself was done on site in the dockyard. With each piece being glued one at a time on to the stern of HMS Warrior.

The project went very well, and as you can see from the photo's, was a great success.

This ship was the Royal Navy's very first iron warship, but never saw any conflicts. Powered by steam and wind, the ship is an impressive sight and well worth a trip to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard for a visit.