Newport Life, more progress
Guess what? Rhode Island is rural!! Go figure. Farming is a big way of life here on Aquidneck Island (home of Newport, Middleton, & Portsmouth) and they have a great Harvest Fair here. There’s an antique tractor parade, and most of them have the farmer’s kids doing the steering. YOu can kind of see this in the 2nd tractor in line here.
There’s also a greased pole climb (I think the grease was pretty much off by the time this kid went up), but nevertheless it was pretty impressive.
Then the fire truck came out and emptied a tanker of water into a dug out pit…
Which, of course was for the mud pit contest. Two folks straddle the pole, and try to wrestle each other off. It’s nothing but fun, especially for the person who has to clean the back seat after they go home.
And then there was the guy with the little train made up of a souped up lawn tractor and cut out oil drums.
Then there was the usualy fare: clam cakes, chowder, hot dogs, bla bla bla, lots of crafts and information about preserving the seashore. Afterwards, we went out walking through the bird sanctuary that this whole event took place on. It was just great. Mom and Dad came down for the weekend and they had a fine time as well.
Meanwhile back in the shop…
The drafting is finished. At last! The hardest part was the lettering. My penmanship has always been awful. Really, that was the consistent criticism from first grade on, and for good reason.
Now, I take tracings of this drawing, transfer it to wood blocks, or “lifts” and use them to build a half-model of the beetle cat. That’ll take a few weeks as we only do this stuff one day a week.
On the personal front, I’ve finished cutting out the pieces for a japanese lantern I’m making for my room. It seemed like such a simple project at the outset, but doing this kind of joinery on this scale is… well, it’s hard. If you cut a joint 3 or 4 thousandths wide, it’s sloppy. It really pushes the limits of precision, and I certainly wasn’t entirely successful with my joinery, but it’ll work. Here’s the glue up… I used just about every spring clamp in the shop for this puppy.
You can’t even tell there’s a lantern under there! It’ll be dry by tomorrow morning and I’ll glue the final 4 supports on, do some sanding and oiling, apply the rice paper and call this puppy done. Phew, it’ll be nice to get on with other projects waiting in the wings.
October 17th, 2006 at 9:59 am
Can you explain the significance of the beetle cat and why it is worthy of restoration? Also, do you know the provenance (or even just the name) of the boat you are working on?
October 17th, 2006 at 9:35 pm
Sure, the Beetle Cat is as common as dirt around here, so there are lots of them to work on. This makes them an excellent training tool. The instructors know the boat’s idiosyncrasies and the school can make instructions, templates, molds, etc ahead of time, which allows for a programmatic approach to the rebuild. Unfortunately, my boat didn’t have a builder’s plate (the ID tag & number) or a stamped number on the sternpost (the other common way to ID a Beetle cat) so I can only guess as to its age. No name either, bummer. The second year is when all hell breaks loose and we get an uncommon, historically significant boat. It’s all up to us at that time to do every aspect of the restoration on our own.