With the brackets fastened to the deck a plywood pattern for the
center rotating frames was made out of plywood .
The castings were then sent out for polishing . The side brackets also
incorporate the side lights and are made out of three individual
castings . The holes and threads were machined into the castings at
this point to attach the assemblies to one another . The space for the
lens was tweaked with a pneumatic die grinder until the lenses fit
securely .
The boat was rolled over and after the plank widths had been recorded
the bottom was cut off in three foot sections with a skill saw . I've
seen some restorers extract all of the screws( about three thousand in
this case ) and remove the planks one at a time ! Cutting the bottom
off takes about half a day . Digging the screws out several days . In
the end the result is the same ---All of the bottom frames exposed for
replacement . Some people have asked me " how will you know the shape
of the plank if you don't have the old one as a pattern ? " My
answer to this is " The guy building the boat in 1937 didn't have a
pattern either ."
P.S. if the background looks a little different here it is because
After outgrowing my shop I rented another location for a while until
my addition was finished .
Now that the deck is finished it was time to start on the windshield .
Bronze castings were sand cast for the side brackets using originals
borrowed from another boat . The bases of the brackets were ground to
the correct angle and fitted to the new deck .
