Ok, so we have a general
concept on how we are going to make our shank, our shank/fluke connection and our roll bar. Next we need to really nail down our fluke design. The three concepts I have shown previously were just sort of knocked out in an afternoon and aren’t really worth much at this point, we really need to look closer at the function of the fluke. To be fair we should take a look at a convex shape in addition to the other three and maybe we figure we have a Danforth type as a second anchor and can skip the mud fluke for now. You tell me.
Before we get started we need to go back to the original Bruce Patent and while we are at it, we can take a look at culture and how it influences design. I already mentioned the Japanese VS Western approach to hand saw design. There are other examples as well. Everyone likes Scandinavian
interior design right? Bright, cheerful, full of light. When you think about how dark and miserable it is up north half the year and the fact that alcoholism and suicide rates are as high as they are it kinda makes sense I suppose.
What about anchors? I mentioned how very Germanesque the Bugel is with its brutal elegance and single-minded minimalism. I bet I could show the Bugel to a good
designer but who knows nothing of anchors and they could guess what country it came from. What about the Spade? Sensuous but complicated? It came from
France?
So what about Peter Bruce and the original “new generation” anchor? When I first looked at the Patent drawings I knew I had seen these fluke shapes before but couldn’t put my finger on it. They are very specific shapes. I was struck but how unlike any anchor I have ever seen they looked and I was totally intrigued. I searched for background but could find very little bio for the man himself. I knew the end use of the Bruce
Claw was for
offshore oil platforms but didn’t know if that where he started out.
All I could do is think about the time period and it hit me very quickly. In 1969, man first stepped foot on the moon. In 1970, the year of Peter Bruce’s original filing for a British Patent, the world’s first Super Sonic Transport took flight, the
Concorde - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia . Just so happens the Concorde was designed and built by a French and British
partnership that relied on Rolls Royce engines that would have been built in
England using complex shaped turbine blades cast in metal using the same basic techniques as the Bruce anchors.
The shape you see in the plan view is called an
Ogive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and has its roots in Architecture where you know it as a Gothic arch. It is also used in the design of things like bullets and rocket nose cones. The design of the world’s first supersonic airplane, the
Bell X-1 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia , is often referred to as a bullet with wings. In fact its shape was derived from the design of the .50 caliber bullet which was known to be stable in trans-sonic flight.
Now here’s the thing, design rarely if ever happens in a true vacuum. You tell me if I am wrong but it looks to me like Peter Bruce, when he set out to reimagine the anchor with a totally new and original design, didn’t at least borrow from these sound-barrier penetrating shapes for inspiration. The fact that Mr. Bruce ultimately turned his back on the
single fluke, compound curved, crooked shank, roll bar anchor described in his original Patent and instead evolved his concepts into what we know as the Bruce
Claw is neither here nor there.
The Bruce Claw is a truly great anchor design as is attested by its many ardent fans. It might not be the best anchor for all people all the time, but it certainly has its place. When it does set as it’s supposed to and it stays set, it is everything you want an anchor to be. Maybe hard packed sand isn’t its forte, but without knowing Peter Bruce’s full story or what his intentions were, we can’t really say if his design makes or misses his mark.
What will the OSA design say about us as designers? Well hopefully it will say we give a crap about the
environment and are willing to do something about it, even if only in a small way. Hopefully it will say we value the individual more than a corporation, that we value relationships with people in our own communities more than relationships with online vendors selling us products from
China. Hopefully it will say we value the free exchange of information and an open society that supports it. Lastly, hopefully it will say that we, as sailors, value
learning the skills and the knowledge necessary to be as self-sufficient as possible, right down to making our own anchor.
So what’s next in the design process? We are going to break down the fluke function within the context of our shank and roll bar and put together our rough design
draft. After that we are going to do
Finite element method - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia of our individual components to determine whether our general assumptions about material thickness and connection strengths were correct. Then it’s back to drawing to massage the details and make it all
work based on the FEA to finish our design
draft. One that’s completed we can actually start making mockups and do some testing.
That said, now is a good time for any dissenters to speak up. If you really don’t like the straight Bugel-styled shank for example, a change to a crooked one is going to affect the roll bar, which in turn affects the fluke. They all relate with each other and at a certain point in the process you need to commit to certain things before you can move forward. Here’s your chance to help make that decision.
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