Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Neill & Son Easy Breezy Ship Repair Facility Begins To Take Shape
Between the 1st and the 7th I was able to build a 16'x32' deck in the backyard. Good friends Pat, Neal and brother in law Tymn gave above and beyond of their 4th of July time to help me get it done. It is built of mostly scavenged and used wood which was a huge savings. The structure has 3 32ft 4x8 beams sitting on 15 4x8 posts, 16ft 2x6 joists on 16" centers, fully blocked to keep them from dominoing and decked off with 1 1/8' tongue and groove plywood with 28 screws per 4x8 sheet. There is a a good bit of 1 by cross bracing underneath.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Bilge Mung & Beautiful Stainless Fuel Tanks
Apologies for the tardy posting my only excuse is that life has been busy enough to keep me away from Redwing.
A few hours on my knees in the bilge yielded this beautiful 5 gal. bucket of bilge mung aaahhhhh gotta love it. I then found the perfect use for Bud Light.............washing ones mouth out after siphoning 30+ gallons of very very old, scrody, scummy, rotten old gasoline. I had to resort to the old Oklahoma credit card because I had no power near by at the time. The old fuel was then suitably disposed of at the local hazmat facility. Each beautiful 55 gal tank has now been thoroughly cleaned by Macs Radiator here in Portland. They were so filthy that each baffled compartment had to be cut open for extra cleaning......they then spent 2 full weeks in their hot tank! I know I am jumping the gun. I won't need the tanks for a good long while but I have never smelled such sour fuel in my life, they would have stunk up any space I stored them!
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Power Train Removal
I did like most auto shop owners..........I blocked 3 working bays with my boat last weekend! I am always so amazed how many auto shops are full of the owners toys. I have a very productive 4 bay shop. I cannot afford to fill mine up with my own projects. I would much rather have my wonderful employee's making me money so I can afford to renovate Redwing! So I towed her home after the surgery!
Last weekend my goal was to remove as much of the power train and steering apparatus(at the stern) as I could. I felt that removing the engine and marine gear would not only lighten the boat making her easier to move about, in what will be a very tight working space but also will give me easy and free access to all her structure amidships. Removing the prop, shaft, cutless bearing and the rudder will do the same for the after portion of the bottom plus the extra clearance will make snaking her down into the EZ Bree Z ship yard much easier.
Good friend Neal Naigus and brother in law Tymn Madden were on hand for the festivities. It was quite a challenge to snake her into the right position in the shop. At the shop we use a cherry picker for engine removal. This project required a chain fall to be hung from a beam. Due to where the beams were in relation to lifts and various other pieces of equiptment bolted to the floor I had to snake the boat in all catty wampus. I still ended up having to temporarily remove one of the big high bay ceiling lights!
The actual removal was quite straight forward.........much easier than on a 21st century front wheel drive all electronic luxury car! All the nuts and bolts came apart quite readily. It looked as if they had all been originally assembled with some sort of "never sneeze" The actual lift went without a hitch although seeing 700 some lbs of iron hanging 12 feet off the floor was a bit unnerving!
The prop shaft and rudder each had a small challenge to be overcome. The head of the bronze pinch bolt on the tiller was severely buggered and unable to be engaged with a tool box full of tricks so I simply cut the bolt through the slit which relaxed the tension enough to let me remove it. I can go after it with an EZ out sometime in the future. The companion flange on the prop shaft would not yield to heat and a puller so out came a thin abrasive cutoff wheel which dispatched it quite readily with nary a nick in the shaft. I was a bit sad to have had to destroy the part(which will just add to my costs)but I know I did my best before relenting to destructive disassembly.
The next step now is to begin to carefully disassemble the severely rotted sole stringers saving as much as I can for patterns to duplicate the crown of the sole. This will also allow me to remove the stainless tanks which I have calculated to be 55 gal each. At that point with the entire bilge exposed to light I think Redwing will really begin to revel her secrets.
Each success is a joy, each problem is a challenge to stretch the mind.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
