Sawdust stopped the leak and saved my boat

In reference to Tom Cunliffe’s Bosun´s Bag article on using up old sawdust in CB September 2019: the sawdust mentioned in the article, used to stop leaking in wooden boats, is very common among old wooden boat owners in Norway. It is called “å maure”, meaning (directly translated): “to ant”. This is an old saying dating back to Viking times, when problems with leaking hulls was probably as relevant then as now. The “anting” was done by putting stuff from ant hills under the boat (probably ants too), and the flow of the leak sucked the “ant stuff” into the cracks and thus the leak stopped.

Today we do not use ant hills anymore, but sawdust will do. If the leak is big, a mix with rubble from the electric planer, or whatever you can sweep off the workshop floor will do. Put it in a bucket with