oakum

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oakum

loose fibre obtained by unravelling old rope, used esp for caulking seams in wooden ships

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Oakum

a short, entangled, unspinnable fiber that contains a lot of shive. Oakum is obtained during the primary treatment of flax and hemp (breaking and scutching). Oakum frequently is processed into slivers and impregnated with tar. It is used in civil engineering work and has various other industrial uses.

oakum

[′ōk·əm]

(materials)

Old hemp or jute fiber, loosely twisted and impregnated with tar or a tar derivative, used to caulk sides and decks of ships and to pack joints of pipes and caissons.

oakum

A caulking material made from old hemp rope fibers that have been treated with tar.

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References in periodicals archive ?

One repair option that the city experimented with was oakum packing and cement patches.

Rehabilitating a new sewer: village of Bradley eliminates /[epsilon]/ with chemical grouting

According to a work Liber ignium ad comburendos hostes (On the Use of Fire to Conflagrate the Enemy) which was allegedly written by some Marcus Graecus from the 9th century this fire was made from sulphur, resin, oakum, oil and some other components.

Humanistic and technical education in antiquity and the middle ages

They douse oakum with kerosene from cans, toss it around in different places, set it on fire, and quickly join the hooting and hollering crowd that crosses over from this shop to others, following the drum signal.

Tolstoy on pogroms? I. Teneromo (Feinerman): "Reminiscences about L. N. Tolstoy. Pogroms"

Without a supply of hemp for sails and rope and oakum, Britain's navy would collapse in less than 18 months.

A war for hemp, iron and timber: a response to John R. Grodzinski's "Remembering the War of 1812"

In the period leading up to 1899, women's prison labor had included, variously, stone breaking, pumping water from a well, picking oakum (41) (assigned to the Lock Hospital prison inmates), beating and preparing coconut fiber for mattress making, cooking prison food, washing prison clothing and bedding, and cleaning.

Local geographies of crime and punishment in a plantation colony: gender and incarceration in Barbados, 1878-1928

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Wadding between the shot and powder was generally oakum or old rope teased apart over thin cork or paper.

Men of the market: with high demand from big city restaurants, hunters harvested ducks in massive numbers

- WHITE MOUNTAINS TO TAKE MINORITY STAKE IN OAKUM BAY CAPITAL

M&A Navigator: Deal pipeline - 25 July

We found out about the "money for old rope" that Victorian prisoners could earn from oakum picking - pulling apart pieces of old rope to be re-used.

It's great outdoors; HOLIDAYS Fed up of the nanny state and want your children to enjoy adventure in the great outdoors? Then join THALIA THOMPSON and head for North Wales

Another is burning small balls made of oakum above a cloth covering the patient's head or another body part, or pouring, also above the patient's head, liquid wax into a container filled with cold water [33].

In the service of hope? Self-awareness of folk healers and their social reception

Work done by the male inmates included breaking granite, grinding wheat, picking oakum and scrubbing floors.

Life & hard times in the Victorian workhouses; Historian looks back to days of Poor Law Act

Team archaeologists believe that the lack of water circulation in that tight space, plus the presence of an oily substance, perhaps caulking oakum, may have inhibited bacteria that normally consume organic material.