Please come and join the Herreshoff Museum and RELIANCE crew at the Frostbite Bash on February 6th!! There will be dancing, food, and the RELIANCE model set up in the museum in anticipation of opening day. It will be a wonderfully fun, two-for-one opportunity you can’t miss!
Great work session this past week; Keith and Sandy hung the rudder, Steve completed a dozen shackles, Herb completed several more splices, and Bill started the viewing stand. We’re on schedule to move RELIANCE to the Hall of Boats for the Frostbite Bash!
Please come and see our boat at the Bash! A sneak peek before we rig her.
PS: Enclosed is a picture of our new Executive Washroom; better late than never!
Work has been progressing over this early winter on all the details of the rigging; the blocks, splicing, and making up the shackles are all getting done. We recently dry-fitted the main sheet system. You can see Herb in the background making a micro-splice. Poor guy!
The Saturday crew has been working with extra gusto!
Laura completed all splices for the two topmast backstay runners and started the wire-manila peak halyard tail splice. Joe has been repainting the deck which, over the past two years in the shed, has become shop worn; Bern has been helping with making blocks.
Meanwhile, Burr delivered his latest masterpiece: the topmast cone assembly. You may remember that last fall, Bill fashioned the lignum vitae truck, and several years ago, Mike cast a topmast cone. Well, Burr took those pieces, machined the cone, then made the topsail halyard sheave and metal housing, and assembled everything together. We couldn’t even find the housing solder joint. So awesome!
Did we mention that the average age of these guys exceeds 80?!
One of our crew members has been restoring a 1900 NGH designed triple expansion steeple engine, of a design that would power a 30-foot launch at 16-18 mph. We thought you’d enjoy pictures of the before and in-process restoration. We think you’ll agree, Don is doing amazing work!
This engine has generated so much interest during tours of our shop, we thought we’d start a steam blog site which will be hosted by Mike, who is constructing the Museum’s new steam gallery with contributions from Don and hopefully you as well!
Mike and Sandy took a trip to the Museum’s sail loft and curatorial space to check out special thimble, span hook, and hank designs. Span hooks were used for gaff and boom spans, and we’ve got 65 hanks to make along with 75 rings. The hanks were not clipped to the forestay and topmast stay, but instead to rings on these wires:
This past week also brought news that German yachting magazine Goose had published a three-page article on our model. We’ve also received inquiries from other yachting and travel magazines, so our RELIANCE seems to be showing well!
Mike has been making wax molds for the angle iron cheeks on the mast. Now, he’s also making a new and improved bowsprit cone.
Meanwhile, Bill continues to work on the spreader. Keith used a mag drill to bore out the holes in the display base to which the keel blocks will be bolted.
On a side note, Keith and Bill took some time off to respond to an SOS from volunteers making Herreshoff Museum’s new steam engine exhibit. It looks like we’ll be making some display stands. You all really need to see this exhibit!
Happy Easter to all those celebrating! We’ve got some updates that will hopefully make your holiday a bit brighter.
Steve spent a day making final arrangements on the boom; Herb is doing some micro-splicing on 1/16th-diameter wire for the boom footropes.
Mike came to the shop with his wax mold-making kit, making wax molds of two of the mast angle iron checks (three more to go) and seven similar cheeks for the gaff.
Keith put final touches on our spreaders; it really changes the whole boat! We can but imagine how large these were in real life.
Tim and Keith worked on tapping holes for eyes to go on the mast and we’ve screwed them in place temporarily to get everything aligned.
Soon we’ll remove them and send them to a nickel plating company along with some other fittings. Tim also finished up some leftover woodworking tasks while I was grinding and polishing new boom fittings that Mike delivered from our casting company.
Meanwhile, Laura, our rigger, has been doing a great job wire splicing as per usual, and even showed us how to make some tacks from wire grommets!
Keith made a jig to hold the spreaders in perfect alignment while the spreader socket pins set in high-tech glues. The bowsprit is starting to look awesome. You can really get the feeling of how massive it was!
Here are some of Mike’s delivery of castings; ready for final filing, polishing, and nickel plating.
Finally, here are the ladder rungs which will go on the top section of the mast.
There is a lot of effort going on behind the scenes to make sure our RELIANCE is accurate. Boats, especially race boats, change during the season. We chose late August as our configuration date, when RELIANCE was measured and raced for the Cup, since this timeframe is when we had the best pictures. Ours has been a constant battle for configuration management.
For example, NGH’s approved drawing 86-126 (from MIT Hart Collection) shows the original placement of three topmast backstay staples and a trysail staple as shown in picture #1 and as placed on our model as in picture #2. Our visit to the NYYC in NYC last Spring to see their model showed a discrepancy which was confirmed in picture #3 as blown up in #4.
Our metal casting expert, Mike Mirman, then used this picture to created a new fitting, shown in #5.
The RELIANCE Project 