Briton Lake

Smooth as glass! This lake is was awesome....and we for the most part, had it all to ourselves.

On up to lake shasta

Takin' the boat up to lake Shasta for a few days, back Sept. 9th. The question is: "what part of the boat is going to break?"

A word about steam bending wood

I'm just a "babe in the woods" when it comes to steam bending wood. But it is fascinating, there's something about bending wood that really turns me on. For a more sane approach (not to mention logical and proffessional) click the wooden sailbat restoration link on the sidebar otherwise watch me mess up real good.

All Steamed up

Well, the pictures tell the tale, the wood did bend, and it bent in a compound curve. I'll take the clamps off tomorrow when everything is real cool man.

Carry water, bend wood

Not wasting any time getting back to the 1953 Correct-Craft project boat we now reveal what those empty paint cans and burner plate are for......drum roll please.......STEAM BENDING!

aw-right! If the pictures aren't that clear I'll explain it: steam flows through clear vinyl hose into the foil wrapped wood. After steaming for about an hour we'll put some clamps on it and see what happens. Gonna do it tommorrow, hope nothing blows up!

Clamping down on leaks

Here's the unit back in its functional place. After cinching down all the various hose clamps....most of them were a little bit loose....I hooked up the garden hose to the integrated system, turned on the engine, revved her up and, wouldn't you know, NO LEAKS! Taking the boat to lake Shasta this upcoming weekend, we'll see if everything holds., Knock on wood.

Worked out a solution...

After consulting with "experts", all of which reccomending using solder, which meant to me:

breaking the seal, that gorilla glue is tough stuff, have to do some heavy pounding or torqueing with a real possibility of bending the metal too much and then dealing with another, bigger problem as well as being back to square one.

Then sweating it together which means applying heat which may affect the other soldered or brazed sections (of which there are a lot...all that inside tubing for instance) which may lead to more complications and I don't think I have the courage to open up this pandoras box of problems.

Making a long story shorter, I had a rubber pipe coupler that I cut narrower and slapped it on that puppy, .........It withstood the garden hose water torture test!