I happened on a book about settling the West after the Civil War. In a description of the wagons by a military officer of one of the forts along the way, I found the name of a crucially important part of the wagons. The thimble-skein. I challenge you to find out what it was.

Rats. Turns out to be easy to find. But you'd never guess.

Dr. Bill, if you'd save me the time, I'd appreciate it. My guess would be some kind of water container.

Dear Jackie: Forgive me for teasing a bit. No, it had nothing to do with the water supply. But it was like a couple cups. Four sets of them.

Looking for etymology of thimble, I found this:
Thumb: (Old English) The thumb is etymologically the 'swollen' part -
an allusion to its greater thickness than the other fingers. Along with
its relatives German daumen and Dutch duim, it goes back to a
prehistoric West Germanic thûmon. This in turn can be traced to
Indo-European tum- 'swell', which also produced English tumour, and
tumult. The b in thumb appeared in the early Middle English period,
when it was still a two syllable word (thumbe), and at first was
pronounced, but it has fallen silent over the centuries. The words
thigh and thimble have related origins.

In site of nautical terms, I found this:
THIMBLE. An iron ring, having a groove formed in its outer circumference. Thimbles are fixed on the cringles of sails where iron hooks are used, as the hook of a tackle, &c.

Dear wwh,

Nautical terms are lovely. I don't know squat about them, but whenever I hear them, they all sound lovely.

I would love to know exactly what a futtock shroud is. Funny term, that.

And what are those little clamps called that ropes are wrapped around? The ones that sort of look like little sharks on two feet--or a bit like andirons?

We had some fun here a while back with "Three sheets to the wind."

And a drunken sailor is a drooping sail?

Byron called his Newfoundland "Boatswain"--and I always thought that was nice, too.

There she blows!
Wordwind

Joke on me. I thought the "thimble-skein" were two parts of the axle and wheel of the wagon. It turn out both words mean the same thing, a metal tube on end of axle to strenthen it and also minimize friction.
The original text said each wagon had a tar bucket, and frequently wheel had to be taken off the axle so lubricant could be applied. I wonder what the source of the tar was. I should think salvaged cooking fat could have been used.

Skein
(Skein) n. [OE. skeyne, OF. escaigne, F. écagne, probably of Celtic origin; cf. Ir. sgainne, Gael. sgeinnidh thread, small
twine; or perhaps the English word is immediately from Celtic.]

1. A quantity of yarn, thread, or the like, put up together, after it is taken from the reel, — usually tied in a sort of knot.

A skein of cotton yarn is formed by eighty turns of the thread round a fifty-four inch reel.

2. (Wagon Making) A metallic strengthening band or thimble on the wooden arm of an axle. Knight.

Dear WW: I know of several sites for nautical terms. I'll PM them to you.

Bill:

Tar comes from destructive distillation of wood, coal, or peat. It's very thick and very oily, and makes a halfway decent lubricant, particularly as it heats up.

Animal fat would probably break down under pressures such as you would find at the bearing surfaces in a wagon. OK in an emergency, but certainly not acceptable for a long haul.

TEd

There are several sites about "naval stores" but CK might get upset if I posted the URLs. Naval stores included a fairly wide spectrum of products made by destructive distillation of pine wood including stumps that were absolutely essential to wooden sailing ships. But none of the sites even mentioned use as wagon wheel lubricant, which surprised me.
The sites about "tar kilns" reminded me of a street by that name in outskirts of New Bedford, which used to puzzle me.
Natives of North Carolina were called "Tar-heels" because so many were employed in that business.

The word "kiln" reminds me that the old timers never pronounced the "n", although my dictionary's second pronunciation does. I did not know before that the word was derived from Latin.

iln kil, kiln
n.
ME kylne OE cylne L culina, cookstove, kitchen6 a furnace or oven for drying, burning, or baking something, as bricks, grain, or pottery

Animal fat would probably break down under pressures such as you would find at the bearing surfaces in a wagon...

Lost in the mists of time, but I thought I remember reading about this being one of the reasons whale blubber/oil was so prized in earlier ages...? I could look it up, but Bill will get there first ;)

Dear Mav: Thanks for the suggestion. Whale oil was indeed used as a lubricant, but it was so valuable for indoor lighting, it would have been too expensive and too hard to obtain for the wagoneers going West who started many miles from the ocean. I remember once reading that watchmakers used it.

The whale oil was principally exported to Britain where it was used for lighting and as an
industrial lubricant. The whale-bone or 'baleen' became the mainstay of the fashion
industry, being used to make skirt hoops and corsets.

There was one other substance derived from whales that commanded an extremely high price, because only small quantities were ever found. Sometimes floating, sometimes cast up on beaches. Can you name it?

its been on the tip of my tongue for the past hour! and i still can't think of it..

it's ear wax ? or adreanal fat? or some such odd thing, a waxy substance.. and its used as a fixative for perfume..

now days there are synthetic compounds that do the same thing, but its still the best, and used in the best perfumes.. and its.. its.. Oh drat!

Hurry up, Mav. Of troy's on the right track.I just found the answer by searching using two of Helen's words.

Maybe Mav's already gone to bed.

Are you thinking of ambergris?

You got it, wofahulicodoc. Incidentally for anyone interested, there is a nice site about Ambergris.

http://www.netstrider.com/documents/ambergris/ You have to click on things to get text.

Your mention of thimbles brings to mind a couple of my favorite German words. The German word for thimble is Fingerhut which means literally, 'finger hat'. The word for glove is Handschuh, 'handshoe'. Incredibly literal minded, those Krauts.

Dear Bob: the one that still baffles me is how did "skein" come to mean the same thing as "thimble"?

Your mention of thimbles brings to mind a couple of my favorite German words. The German word for thimble is Fingerhut which means literally, 'finger hat'. The word for glove is Handschuh, 'handshoe'. Incredibly literal minded, those Krauts.

You're right. You should see what they did with "final solution"!

Thank you, CK. That too is a subject for jest.

and what are those little clamps called that ropes are wrapped around?
I haven't got the foggiest what a "futtock shroud" is, WW, but those "little clamps" are called "cleats".

CK, Keiva, I HAVE seen what they did. I was fourteen years old when my People-to-People group was taken to the museum at Dachau. It was more than my poor heart could take and I had to go back to the bus and sit there with my head in my hands, crying, until the rest of the group returned. Please, no more of this here. There is no bus for me to go and wait in here.

I unreservedly apologise if my poke at the Germans has upset anyone. That was not my intention, give or take the entire German nation. It was not intended to be anti-Semitic (I'm not anti any racial group), and it was not intended to make light of the atrocities that occurred.

It was a play on words based on BYB's snipe at the German literal approach to the need for a word.

It backfired. Sorry.

I just remembered one more meaning for "thimble". When I was a boy, my father fixed up a gym in what had been my grandfather's hay loft. We had a pool table, basketball court (naturally not regulation size) and he put up a pair of trapezes. To make these safe, in addition to splicing loops in the rope ends connected to the roof rafters, the loops were constructed around tear-shaped half-round channels called thimbles that went over the hooks in the rafters, to strenthen the loops of rope. The same thimbles are used on sailing ships where there is a loop of rope subject to heavy loads over long periods.

A difficult thing to describe, but I tried hard to make it clear.