Tag Archives: deck

Finally: The Painting Has Begun!

Early last week, Keith, Herb, Steve, and Sandy erected a tent frame to put the RELIANCE model under. Buck from the world-renowned Itchiban Yacht Painters stopped by to form the actual tent.

On Thursday, Buck returned and put the first five coats of primer on the boat. Buck says he’ll come back on Monday with another person to block down the shear and keel, though he thinks it is “good enough.” I sense he’s really bought into our boat and it is now his boat! On Monday, the plan is that he’ll “block” long board the hull with 150 grit and then put another 3 coats of primer on. We will then sand to 400 grit and he’ll return for finishing coats.

New Feats and Footies

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We’ve started assembling the jib halyard. Burr made all the links, while Bruce threaded he shackle pins. Bern tapped said shackles to receive the pins.

Meanwhile, the endless toil of filling and fairing both the rudder and the boat continues. Bruce, Bern , Zach spend plenty of their time working on this; just look how much dust we can make!

Chris Broman visited the museum this past weekend, flush from victory with his “footie” yacht at the World Marine Trade Conference in Providence. He’d also attended a breakfast presentation Sandy gave there on the wonderfully modern Herreshoff Manufacturing Company.

We have our own “footie” champion, Mike, so the challenge has been issued!! Note, Chris has a split mainsail and boom; an airfoil shape but also goes wing and wing downwind! Just a little G2…

Finishing Off the Deck Edge

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Denise delivered the third mate’s jersey, complete with all the details: hand embroidery of RELIANCE NYYC, ribbing at the collar, and ribbing at each sleeve end. Thank you very much!

Meanwhile, Bill, Herb, and Sandy have dry fit one of the deck edge toe rails into place so we can perfect our plans to complete attachment.

This toe rail assembly was actually an extension of the shell plating at roughly deck level to hold an angle iron piece with bull nose at the top. At the bow of the real RELIANCE, the nickel steel shell plate was 5/40″ thick, which lead to another of our “moments.” In our scale, that is 1/48″ thick!

Our RELIANCE model–with its deck the length of a J-24–had only 21 web-frames to which tobin bronze and nickel steel plates from about 1/48″ to about 5/128″ thick were attached. Imagine sailing your J-24 with that hull!

The toe rail really finishes off the deck, as you can see here:

(The bottom of the angle iron had been laid earlier as can be seen in the foreground)

Deck Edge Update, Shipments, and Spreader Progress

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Work continues on the deck edge toe rails. One is complete and the second one is going into the jig for some final-finish work.

We received a large shipment of nickel plating from R.E. Sturdy, our third such shipment from them. Again, we give them our most sincere thanks and praise for donating to our team’s success.

Also received in that shipment were plated topmast shroud turnbuckles and mast hoops; thank you Tom and Dorothy!

Keith continues to make amazing progress on the spreader and now it is on to the truss!

Finally, we moved our benches to align the mast, topmast, and topsail yard so initial work on rigging can be done. This will also enable us to complete our topmast with sheaves and cone parts.

Continuing to See Progress

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We’ve been fretting about constructing our deck edge, having decided we needed the strength of a thin metal toe rail. First, we were going to shape it on our table saw in jigs and a metal cutting blade, then back to the old router routine. seen here:

This has routed surfaces on both sides, and–in fact–has three routed surfaces and a bulb to very tight and thin dimensions. You can see there are two of us taking care of everything while Bill carefully guides the router along. By the end of the day, we had one 12-foot section completely routed out, and three others almost so. We were so curious about the fit that we just had to dry fit this first piece in place, and WOW it really changes everything. We’ll show you profiles of both sides once we’ve filed and sanded the surfaces to perfection next week.

Getting Ready for Opening Day

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Burr just delivered the RELIANCE bell, complete with a clapper, with engraving done by a South Carolina engraver. You can see its size compared to a U.S. Quarter! We can’t wait to see the reaction of our riggers when we tell them one of them will need to braid the cotton lanyard…

Joe brought back our wood hatches, companionway, and monitor with final finishing. They look great and bring the deck to life.

We’ve also finally received the uniforms for our 52 crew members! They look exquisite; thank you very much, Denise.

Laura rigged the topmast shrouds and backstay eyes, and even brought her sister and parents to see her handiwork. Great to see pride for all involved!

Having Some Fun!

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Keith has been worried that our main mast will fit; we’ve found out that we actually have a few inches to spare. It’s still not much…

Here we show Herb enjoying his craft, perhaps too much. A happy splicer is a happy rigger!

We have 48′ of brass deck railing to shape. Bill believes he can accomplish this using the table saw and has been busy trying out a number of creative jigs and fixtures.

Lastly, we have Keith making sure that the mast collar will fit over the mast truss chainplate.

TEAM RELIANCE: Our Dust Bunny

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We are making extra spars to be stowed on deck. Here Steve Siok, our little dust bunny, is fashioning the sides of the #2 club topsail club.

This Week in Building 28

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We continue with progress! Joe Uzzo is applying canvas tops to the hatches and Bill Lawton is routing out the hole in the deck to match hatch openings. Tim Horton sprayed etching primer on our aluminum chainplates and mast partner plate. Some he then painted steel color. Others will be painted with the hull. He also has been removing our fittings off the deck and will begin sanding the deck preparatory to laying cork deck and painting the margin plates. We just found a sample of cork lying on a Museum shelf from KATOURA and feel we have the right cork solution!

Tim, Steve Siok and Herb Luther continue to work on RELIANCE displays and the group just submitted a paper for the Classic Yacht Symposium. This piece discusses what we’ve uncovered while building RELIANCE about N.G.H. as a manufacturing engineer as well as a materials, weight and structural engineer. Probably more importantly we discuss what we’ve found about Herreshoff Manufacturing Co as an advanced high tech business with relevance to today’s business.