Edith meets the family

This being the one hundredth anniversary of the Kolb brothers' expedition down the Green and Colorado, the Grand Canyon Association decided to do a retrospective show of the Kolb bothers' escapades during their three quarters of a century on the rim. Many Kolb descendants came to the opening on Wednesday and Thursday so Edith and I drove up to join them. Here is Edith getting her first rim view of the Canyon:

Down in the Kolb Studio we met Emery Kolb's grandson, Emery "Smoky" Lehnert and his wife Ruth. Smoky grew up at the rim with Grand Canyon and the Kolb Studio as his playgrounds. This is their first visit since Emery Kolb died in 1976. Boy, do they have some stories. 

Storytelling runs in the family, and Smoky's daughter Jennifer suffers from the affliction as well.

Jennifer's daughter Kerstin, one of Emery Kolb's twin great-great-granddaughters, listens to grandpa spin another one.

Edith spent all afternoon basking in the sun in front of the El Tovar.

Even the new Superintendent, Dave Uberuaga, succumbed to her charms.

It was an utterly delightful time. What a treat.

(thanks to Wayne Ranney for the last two shots)

Now what?

Well, Betty Boop is, for all practical purposes, done. Woohoo! She needs some water. White water. Soon.

Here are a few catch-up photos from the last few days of being too tired to tell stories. Below is a shot of drilling the holes for four eleven-inch stainless steel twelve dollar goddam bolts that hold the oarlocks to the gunwale. The levels are clamped to the side of the boat to give me a visual idea of where I am heading. Astonishingly, it worked.

Test-fitting the new hatch lids.

Hurrying the epoxied-on nonskid texture by the wood stove.

Peering through the self-bailer with the boat up on its side.

Painting lids

Then suddenly this evening: done.

Now what? Plenty. Tomorrow Edith comes down from the loft to go for a ride up to Grand Canyon for a party with the Kolb family on Wednesday/Thursday. Betty will be going upstairs to let her paint cure until a river screams out for us to go run it. And Euphrates and Lodore will be coming in this weekend for a bottom beef-up next week. No rest for the psychotic boatbuilder.

Feliz año nuevo

Betty Boop and I rang in the new year with an evening visit from Audria and Laura, wherein we toasted, got roasted, and launched a flaming chinese hot air balloon that immediately got caught in a tree. We freed it in time for it still to fly high, with much shouting, screaming, a ladder, and a long stick. 

When midnight struck I took a break from painting hatch lids to send up a few aerial fireworks. The launch mortar tube blew to smithereens on the first launch, more smithereens on the second launch (after a quick fix) and into final fragments on the third, showering the driveway and my long-suffering van with exploding magnesium sparkles. 

My omens predict a year of things going hilariously, spectacularly awry. Excellent!

As you see in the picture, Betty Boop is nearly done--a day or two of details and she is ready to rock--hinges, latches, a few dollops of paint. I had figured three weeks to refurbish her. Ha! More like about seven. But without my blind, manic, unrealistic optimism, I'd never start anything. And without all the incredible help, encouragement, advice, and occasional jeering from so many fine friends, I'd never get anything done. Thanks to everyone who has been a part of Betty Boop's rebirth. She'll be floating soon. Happy New Year y'all. 

Boop-oop-a-doop.

The envelope please...

Well, here are the eight contestants for our floor bottom beef-up. Lots of hammering and rock hurling went into this careful scientific analysis.

And the winner is...

#2.

A layer of biaxial cloth, covered by a layer of Xynole, whatever that is, and covered with a layer of 4-ounce glass to make it easy to finish. All laid up with Resin Research 2040. 

Number 2 looks a little worse for the wear, but that's because it went though the semi-finals and finals. It held up remarkably to some serious abuse, failing well after we thought it would. The runner-up was #8, which was this same lay-up with a layer of Core Mat beneath the biaxial. It was the toughest of all but the additional weight and expense did not seem worth the marginal increase in toughness.

A few of the others flunked outright. Such as numbers 4 and 5 here, which are two different weights of Core Mat with Xynole and 4-ounce glass. The Core Mat just collapses without a biaxial covering. So there you have it. Losers!!!

The end is near

Here be the hatch lid rims, being assembled and glued up in place. When they have kicked I will rabbet in the plywood lids, finish them with nonskid texture and paint, then hinge and latch them on. That and the self-bailing tube for the footwell are all that remains in this mad project.

How do you post an aroma?

I love it when I get to plane Port Orford cedar. The whole shop fills with the most amazing odor, full of memories of decades of living aboard a Briggs boat in Grand Canyon in the 70s and 80s. When I was so much younger, more flexible and resilient, and things didn't hurt so much. An memories of coastal Oregon, talking to Buzz Holmstrom's brother and going to the mill. Rolf said, "You are going to love working with this wood. It's like butter." I gave a handful of P.O. cedar shavings to the daughter of a dory boatman friend of mine a while back. She smelled them, smiled, and said "Home."

Here, smell this:

 

All of that to make a bunch of little sticks for the hatch lid frames.

Meanwhile we laid up our eight experimental dory bottoms. Some of those thick fabrics like Core Mat and Biaxial Glass are really thirsty. Dan was looking under the table to see if the fabric was leaking resin out the bottom. Nope. Just really thirsty. Tomorrow we wreck 'em.

Bits and pieces

While Betty Boop's paint gets ever harder and drier I am making a mess of wee parts that go on her decks and hatches. First is the full-width front splashguard--the piece on the original boat that pooled rainwater and debris from the high front deck, causing the majority of the deck and gunwale rot. This is not going to happen again. I am sealing the bejeezus out of the deck and splashguard. But more importantly, the owners of the newly rejuvenated Boop will be contractually bound to keep her indoors in the winters. Dammit. Or I will repossess her and kick the perpetrator in the shins.

And some cute little setback rests for the passengers. These, Gary Ladd tells me, were an addition of Larry, the second owner. But I think they'll be nice.

With some leftover white oak from the Edith project this spring I am making a passenger handle for the front seat, and a couple smaller ones for the rear deck. Gary, who boated with the boat as both Betty Boop and Great Thumb, said it was always awkward to get aboard the boat as she departed, and something to hold on to would be really convenient. Plus it will be a good place to secure the stern line. And if you want to ride on the back deck (yeeeehaw!) these will be most handy. And a couple of boatman seat guards to keep the throw cushion and boatman butt in place.

These next things are raised oarlock stands, which came with Larry's tenure as owner. He raised both the seat and the oarlocks to a height that seems to make good sense, so with fingers crossed, I have replicated both. A weathered original blue one is in the foreground.

Another dividend from the Edith project is a pair of brass 5/8" oarlock inserts that I was shipped (and charged $42 for!) by mistake. I figured I'd use them someday, and not even a year has passed and here they go. Cast silicone brass. Pretty jazzy.

Meanwhile we are already gearing up for the next project--beefing up the bottoms of the first two Fretwater dories, on which I errantly skimped a little too much on fiberglass. They have been punctured a few times in what should have been insignificant insults. So here are eight floor layups that match our original floor. Tomorrow we'll lay up different series of materials--biaxial glass, core mat, xynole, and regular glass, all with our new favorite resilient resin. 

The next day we get to smash 'em! May the best floor win.

Baby blue christmas

Saturday: caulking, scraping, sanding, then painting the white parts of the decks, walls, and gunwales. Then off to the Humphrey Summit Christmas Eve party to work on my Christmas hangover. Which was more or less a success. 

I checked my socks this morning and Santa has a foul sense of humor. What a jerk. Off to the shop at the crack of noon to lay up the splashboard for the bow. Then I masked the boat out for the baby blue interior. Not the color scheme I would have come up with on my own, but somehow, in some weird, funky retro way, it looks right. I guess if you look at enough old Sierra Club river books with the old 1960s dories, you come to appreciate boats looking like this. Which I have and do.

 A christmas offering burns at the shrine of the virgin of Guata Boopie. Feliz Navidad.

Mister Sandman

I've been coming up from the shop a bit too late and exhausted to put up the blog for a few days. Time to catch up. On Wednesday Alan Motter came up and told me the sad news that he won't be adopting Betty. Sigh. But in penance he helped me screw the decks on. 

Then Gary Ladd stopped in. Gary has had the unique perspective of running with this boat as the Betty Boop, in 1970 and '71; helping remodel her in the winter of '74-'75, then accompanying her on several eventful trips as the Great Thumb from 1975 on through the early '80s. Gary was glad to see her salvaged and had a million insights and stories about the boat, her features, and history.

I spent most of Thursday alone with the Boop, trimming down her decks where they overhung, sanding, caulking, and so on. By Thursday evening she was nearly ready to receive her nonskid texture.

Roy came by this morning and we masked out the areas where the nonskid would go. Amy came by just in time to document this bizarre process.

I rolled on the epoxy as thin as I could push it while still getting uniform coverage.

 Roy followed dribbling fine sandblasting sand.

Then I followed him, pulling tape and vacuuming loose sand.

And there you have it. We have turned the boat into fine-grit sandpaper. A couple coats of paint will bring it down to a tough, durable surface that is easy and safe to run around on when wet. Which it will be.

And tonight, the undercoating. 

Eager as I am to see the deck turn sky blue, I am going to delay gratification and do the white circumferal stripe tomorrow, and save the blue for either Christmas Eve or for my Christmas present. Meanwhile,

Haul the decks

Well, I met my goals for the day, almost. I got all the remaining deck pieces cut, fit, marked for screws, drilled, countersunk, undercoated, and epoxy saturated, and the boat interior re-coated and ready to cover up. The part I missed was getting it done before midnight. Oh well. This shot is the left rear deck being clamped in place to mark.

Where the front and rear deck covers meet on the gunwale, they overlap by an barely a half-inch on one edge, but a good inch-and-a-half on the other. A half inch isn't that good for a scarf joint, but an inch-and-a-half is. So I took what I could get and made a weird, twisted scarf. In the shot below, the diminishing lines are not perspective. That's a twisted bevel.

And they went together just fine. That babyshit paint stain in the bow footwell has got to go though.

All deck boards cut, fit, and in place.

Then removed again for undercoating. While that was drying by the wood stove I dealt with the dirty diaper stain and recoated the interior.

And sometime after midnight the deck boards got flipped right-side-up and saturated with epoxy. 

Tomorrow should be fun. If I can wake up.

Not sure how real people do it

So I get up at 7:30 ready to jam on Betty Boop. But a few things have to happen first. At 6 p.m. I finally get to the shop. Life is a very time consuming thing.

Regardless, I started the decking. I got the front three pieces cut and ready to install once they get their coats of toxic sealers. In the first shot you may notice where we accidentally started painting the front footwell with hatch interior paint. Oops. Here I am marking the second side of the front hatch decking.

Which leaves a piece like this. Does anybody need one of these?

Figuring out how to do these three pieces has been roaming through my mind at odd hours for a week or two. The subconscious is an amazing thing. Once I started in on this tonight, it was almost as if I had a plan or knew what I was doing.

My friend Bruce said he thought this sort of crowned decking was called a "turtle deck." Anyone else ever heard that? I like it, so am calling it that regardless.

The Betty Boop had her gunwales covered, so I am replicating that. I think it may be annoying when you want to side-tie the boat, or tie it on your trailer, so I am burying some mahogany plugs between the gunwales at the front and rear of the cockpit. These each have a pre-dilled 7/8-inch hole which I will continue up through the gunwale cap so the boat can actually be tied up. Or down. Okay, it's not "authentic" but hey, it's my boat at the moment and I want it to be usable and well taken care of. Sorry.

And so forth. With the hardest three deck boards I am optimistic about the remaining nine tomorrow. Down to the shop early again. Hah!