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Truck (rigging)

Part of ship's rigging

A truck is a wooden ball, disk, or bun-shaped cap at the top of a mast, with holes in it through which flag halyards are passed. Trucks are also used on wooden flagpoles, to prevent them from splitting.

Without a masthead truck, water could easily seep into the circular growth rings of a wooden mast. However, the grain in the truck is perpendicular to that of the mast, allowing the water to run off it.

Flagpoles

Flagpoles often have a truck on top of them which often holds a decorative piece above, known as a finial, which is usually a ball. They are usually made of solid metal, however a tradition in the United States is to sometimes put a razor, a penny, or a grain of rice inside.

References

Harold A. Underhill. (1946). "Masting and Rigging the Clipper Ship and Ocean Carrier". Brown, Son and Ferguson.
Milzarski, Eric. (2018-05-15). "This is what is actually inside the top of the flag pole".

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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