In and Outs of the Museum....

During the summer we lose quite a few of our volunteers to their own boats and cottages but the rest of us carry on regardless! As there are multiple projects under way you'd think we'd just focus on getting those done, right? Problem with that is that half the crew - leader included - have ADHD!

Progress was in fact made on current projects:

Skiff got it's seats varnished and mounted -

about 7 coats of Epifanes

George does final assembly

and Mini-Hopper's deck was primed and painted -

first of three coats of primer...

two coats of Epifanes 218 green

One of the "tricks" of decent paint and varnish on the "mahogany" plywood we use is the filling of the grain in the wood - it is amazingly variable over the surface of any given sheet. The result is that we tend to apply two coats of primer and then sand most of it off to get a semblance of flatness then apply a third primer coat. Sand that to the point where the surface is still all white and if it looks pretty flat proceed with the colour. Amazing how "flat" becomes orangepeely once colour is applied though - in this case the first coat of green was sanded almost to extinction and there was still some orangepeel left. To get what looked like a final finish last night I used a full foam roller of paint for about 1 ft sq of deck. The truth will out this morning - haven't seen it dry yet!

Well, this is the result, looks OK in Gas-Hopper Green!

TNT was a bit slow this week, I needed a flush cutting saw to cut trim off the plugs we used in the coaming - mine disappeared last week so I bought a replacement from Rona - I think it is called a Fast-Max? It was no replacement for even the cheap one I had bought at Lee Valley. The blade is too short and thick to be curved in against the work - and it was a very slow cut to boot. Two pulls with the lost one per plug but this one required 10 or more sawing strokes and it marked the coaming up - not sure if you picked this up but it is not a recommended buy for our kind of work!

Coaming along nicely...

you can see the saw marks...

In order to possibly get some more boats in the water and to put the little gaff cat away, we pulled together a boat moving crew consisting of M'self, Jim, Scot and Michael on Thursday of this week. In order to get this boat into a good storage position we needed to do some serious shifting about plus we wanted to extract our Greavette SunFlash II from the back row! Pictures tell the story but we were able to create a whole new floor area for storage on the upper level - bonus!

Ready to go with gaff cat in tow...

Wittekat shifted over - she's massive!

Michael, Jim and Scot haul and tow!

Greavette wiggling out of storage.

little cat heading into storage.

Chestnut, Peterborough and dinghy.

Once we had everything that was to leave out on the grass we hooked up and headed back to the shop. The boats we brought back include, the Fontaine cedarstrip (see ACBS article in a recent Classic Boat issue), a SlickCraft moulded runabout and our Greavette Sunflash II.

Saturday included power-washing raccoon evidence and hay from the new arrivals including an assessment of what we have to work with under the covers. Here's where we are so far:

Greavette SunFlash II, looks good but varnish is on brink of failure and will have to be renewed sooner than later. If mechanicals check out she should be fine for some running this season if not left in the sun too much.

drat - didn't take picture with cover off!

Fontaine cedarstrip, still looks good but deck is quite faded and has some loose areas of varnish. We decided to whip the fittings off the deck and give it a "quick few coats of varnish" - ever heard that before? Stay tuned...

Our motor shop is preparing a Johnson 40 for this girl.

and the Slickcraft moulded plywood runabout. We have never had a chance to examine this boat since it was donated at least 8 years ago so was a mystery unveiling yesterday! Best news is that the hull seems to be in excellent condition which in our experience is a rarity in a moulded ply boat. This boatbuilder is still in existence but this is from their early history and is certainly a very deluxe creation for it's time. The Merc 65 that came with it was checked out and found to be free and fired right up. The upholstery on the other hand has been hard used by raccoons.

George removes raccoon evidence...

the bottom has been glassed but is OK

overall in good shape and sharp looking

this was a classy craft at the time

So an interesting week. Mini-Hopper almost ready for sea trials - maybe next weekend? Stay tuned!