Tag Archives: Keith Bradley

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.

Topmast, Spreader, and Rudder Updates

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We’ve now got the topmast lodged onto the rest of the mast’s body, with Herb working on some rigging details. While slaving away in his lonely corner of Building 28, Herb noticed an error on the spreader’s rigging: one of the wires was too short. Fortunately, he was swift to correct the wiring, and has since progressed on the spreader/mast system.

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Keith is beginning the process of attaching the rudder to the model. He’s screwed a long metal piece–a set of gudgeons–to the back of the keel; the rudder will be pinned to this piece by a series of pintles.

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An interesting fact we discovered is that the RELIANCE’s rudder was actually held up by a bearing attached to the lower part of the ship’s hull. Still figuring out how we’re going to work that into the design.

Meanwhile, Steve is working on setting up turnbuckles to be plugged and added to the overall structure.

Prepping for the Paint Job

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As we near (what we hope to be) the beginning of the end of this project, the job of painting the RELIANCE model becomes ever-present.

Bern–with a little help from Sandy–added several coats of Marine Premium Filler to the upper hull in order to fill any indentations and spot any errors we’ve made along the way. The filler hardened extremely fast, so Bern really had to utilize his youthful energy for this task.

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The crew then transitioned to the fairing phase, taking shifts sanding down the coats in preparation for priming, which should be happening within the next couple weeks.

We’re leaving the actual painting of the RELIANCE to the pro’s. By the end of October, our dear readers should expect a beautifully painted model–and maybe, if Keith gets his way, some flame magnets!

The Paint Job

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Buck Frost from Itchiban Yacht Painters came by the shop to discuss painting Reliance; we now have a plan!

Keith, Bill, and the crew installed our portside toe rail; now all the toe rails are complete. Burr also helped fabricate the metal fantail piece. (We’ll show this installation in a later blog. The fantail will still take a little effort and metal persuasion to join to the toe rails.)

In the meantime, Bill couldn’t wait to try out the Awlgrip 545 Primer and 3M Marine Filler.

When the team left for the day, Sandy decided to have some fun and complete the task of filling and fairing the starboard side. The next day, Ken came by on his evening constitutional to check out Sandy’s work. Next thing Sandy knew, he was watching a tutorial. Better yet, Ken did more in one hour than Sandy had done all day!

Now, Reliance has a new look! The hull shape really stands out now that the toe rails have been blended into the hull. Simply beautiful and powerful…

Truss and Rigging Progress

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Keith has been completing the truss and it is now mounted onto the mast.

Laura has now started to fabricate and attach the truss and spreader guys.

Meanwhile, Laura and Herb have been studying photos of the Reliance bowsprit and are now completing all the little bowsprit details.

They have also completed the upper ends of the standing rigging and, as shown, have them tarred, varnished, and ready to go. We’re just a week or two away until the mast can be hoisted upright in our mast jig and the standing rigging can be completed at deck level.

We thought we could find tasks for Steve that would not involve power tools, but Sandy caught the ever creative Steve with a Dremel tool in his back pocket… we’re just trying to excite his inner crafts person, but the power tool guy always comes to the surface…

Deck Edge Milestone

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Today marked another major milestone: the first deck edge toe rail went in place. We still have the port side to do, but we have the process well-proven; though we still have a lot of faring work to get the new railing to flow evenly as a continuation of the shell plating, but we can see how it’ll all work together. Whew, another risk milestone overcome!

These rails really change RELIANCE ‘s profile.
Keith and Bill, with help from Laura, Don, Sandy, and new volunteer Bern worked all day on the 24’ long starboard rail.

Bern has begun restoring the 1899 COLUMBIA topmast, which we’ll show in upcoming blog posts. Turns out that COLUMBIA’S topmast truck served as the model for RELIANCE’s, so we’re looking at this with great interest. As an exhibit accompanying RELIANCE, our COLUMBIA topmast will also show how massive these spars really were.

At last, the Big Day!

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After more than a decade, RELIANCE moves off her shipping cradle and on to the display stand. Can you believe it?!!!

We moved RELIANCE to the back of the shed under the chain falls; we hoisted her out of the shipping cradle and said goodbye to that cradle. Our head rigger Laura holds RELIANCE aloft with one hand.

As you can tell from their work, our female team mates are very talented, great team members, and very strong! Laura holds the bow up so Steve can position Bill’s display stand under the keel blocks.

Bill carefully lowers RELIANCE onto the 1,500 lb. steel plate while Keith inserts drift pins to assure alignment of bolt holes (since Keith measured and drilled the holes in the steel plate, he is actually out of the picture saying a couple of “Hail, Mary’s”: the secret of Notre Dame engineering, I’m told).

Steve and Laura tighten the bolts in place, noting how perfect the fit is – no shims or alignment tricks needed!

Here are the bolted blocks up close. Note the wooden wedges which keep the boat aligned fore and aft, and away from the blocks which were welded at a 15 degree angle. The engineers assured Sandy these wedges were unnecessary, but he’s a belt and suspenders guy and has been around engineers too long. (P.S. they were necessary!!.)

RELIANCE’s profile is revealed; beautiful, amazing form!

RELIANCE is moved back to our work space and “The Guy Upstairs” Dave miraculously appears to inspect and approve our work.

Then Keith and Sandy replaced all the parts that had been stripped off RELIANCE for the full evolution.

Bill has started building the grand stand to top it off.

As part of the celebration, we have a Tuesday crew photo opportunity moment; unfortunately, camera shy Laura has gone to another job.

This respite is short, however; soon, everyone is back to work. Except, apparently, for Sandy, whom we’re sure needs some relaxation time!

The Crew At Work

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Keith works on the rudder between all the other tasks we give him. He likes engineering problems and more often than not come up with simple, innovative solutions. He has a Notre Dame engineering degree and Michigan advanced degree, so he’s a conflicted soul. Here it looks like he is invoking a higher spirit into a solution.

Steve is our amateur Astronomer, so we give him work on our mast so he can get closer to the stars.

Tim is a psychologist so we gave him 450 screws to set the boom sail track in place; it’s finicky work that requires precision. We try to play with his mind every once in awhile because we’re worried that in the background he’s writing a “tell all” book about the RELIANCE inmates. In this picture, he has about 150 screws in place – only 300 more, Tim! In the background, Herb is proving his wire to manila splicing technique.

Meanwhile, Laura works on bowsprit rigging. The bobstays are tensioned by tightening the bowsprit retaining bar; there are no turnbuckles on the bobstays.

Ken from Hall Spars dropped by on his evening constitutional and we talked about how boats today tension their shrouds with hydraulic mast rams since the turnbuckles are too short to perform this function. He also noted that on large racers rigging eyes are replacing tangs.

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.

Boom and Spreader Progress

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Sven has been working on the boom…

…and Keith has been seizing the spreader chain plates with wire, just as it was shown in our drawings.

It still seems incredible that there was only one set of spreaders on this ~190′ tall rig; 34 feet tip to tip of 3-inch thick Douglas fir. Here’s some spreader progress: