Monday, March 11, 2019

Hatch Latchy

Bad Blog Boy has been neglecting his readership again. So sorry. I get kind of busy sometimes and one thing leads to another and a month whistles right on by. We had been getting ready to put a new bottom on the Hetch Hetchy when last I checked in. Okay then. A few more grinds and whacks and we're ready.


On she goes.



The Columbine comes back in for a bit of final paint touch up before she goes back home.


 Watch your head, Pat.


From this side, the Hetch Hetchy looks like a new boat. But there's still a lot of the old girl inside.


On with the primer. (I had two colors of primer.)



We are reproducing the paint job she arrived with--with a touch of proportional jazzing up.


I'm docking Cricket's pay.


A wee bit of fiberglass--taping the decks to the sidewalls.



And as usual, work ended an hour ago and here we sit.


Taking the old boatman's footwell down to raw wood for new paint--and to see if there's anything nasty under all that paint. 


Can you tell where the respirator and the goggles were not?


Outer chines on. A fellow named Marco stopped by to see the shop. But idle hands are the devil's playground. He's good with a screw gun. And a paint brush.



Decks primed and ready to paint. We are leaving the old wood with an oiled finish inside the hatches, both to show some of the boat's history, and to discourage--and detect-- rot.


It's time to make hatch lids. Cricket is building hatch lid frames out of ash here.



Oh oh.


Hatch lids gluing up.


They fit!



Gunwales on. Like framing a painting.


Hatch lids hinged.


Wahoo! Deck paint!


Intermission: The Avery gals are back to finish off their bookshelf boat:



Bright Side will grace the window of Bright Side Bookshop in downtown Flagstaff. Stop buy and visit.


D5, a new aluminum dory from Eddyline Welding, is here for gunwales. It's from my Bears Ears design of last year, and we are going to build a wooden one shortly. So we thought we'd see if we could steam bend two entire sets of gunwales all at once. Yup. We can.


After they cool off and the shape has set, we take them in and glue up the scarf joint in the middle.


We are hosting an after hours party for the film festival. The old Hetch Hetchy floor makes a fine stage prop.



And Kate Aitchison's carved McKenzie boat, Katie Lee, is down here for the weekend to be displayed at the Whale Foundation annual WingDing. Kate is this year's featured artist. Can you see why?


On the wall are prints made off the boat sides. 


The party raged into the night, but we were all in bed before 4am.


Craig Childs and the Scatterlithics are tearing it up onstage.


Once we recover, we put on D5's gunwales.




Do you sense a theme here at Fretwater Boatworks?


Intermission is over. Back to the Hetch Hetchy. On with the hatch latchies.



She's ready to go out and play. But it's snowing out there.


There's that darned bottle again. And it's friend the can.




No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.