Ongoing Progress

Here is Scottie Hargers 1982 helmet. The actual one he wore while driving our boat.

 

The multi colored picture is during sanding, the brown rust is primer and the "RED" is the first coat of paint.

 

Now it will sit for another week, then a second coat of "RED". Glue the black trim back on and call it close enough for our 30,000 foot quality rule.

"Gentlemen start your engines" (or maybe one day down the road).

 

Today my 225 shoes arrived - our (now extinct) boat class was called a 225 hydro, it's letter designation is "N". I call New Balance shoes, 225 shoes because of the "N" on the sides. They are white and blue - hey just like the boat.

 

Also today, our new to us helmet arrived. It was $9.99 on e-bay and already the right color. After I get the other helmet totally restored, we will have two red helmets of different sizes. I cleaned the shield and waxed the helmet. It turned out pretty nice.

 

The patches still need to be sewn onto the suit, but they are placed correctly.

 

It is all the way up to 31 degrees today, much warmer then last week... LOL We also received about 1" - 1.5" of snow last night. Traversing to the shop is covered with foot prints in the snow. The work is slowing slightly because of the weather, but it is still progressing along. Sanding, leveling and more sanding takes more time.

 

Both sponson runner battens have now been shaped, glued and screwed into place. The leveling (sanding) process is next. Once both sponson are level enough to be skinned, I will stop for a while and work on the bottom rear section. The sponsons can't be skinned until I get the new transom piece attached, new bottom piece cut and attached. The new airtrap skin attached. After all that is done, I can skin the sponson bottoms, start applying spar varnish/epoxy to the whole bottom. Roll the boat over and skin the deck. Seems simple enough.... LOL

 

BTW, in the case of both sponson, I added one extra batten to each sponson over the original construction. My feeling is it will make both sponsons stronger. Allowing them to take the pounding they will be taking due to going slightly slower now.  Since vintage boats only do fly by's or exhibition racing, we will be going much slower now (maybe only 110 MPH instead of the higher #'s we did yrs ago).

 

Attached are pictures of a trailer we are close to agreeing on. It is being restored also and the current owner will paint it dark blue for us. The trailer used to carry the a 6 liter Ron Jones Tool Crib hydroplane.

It has been a while since I last updated you. Here are a couple of new pictures. Your vacation from my e-mail is temporarily over. For now anyway.

 

It got all the way UP to 27 degrees today. A little to cold for the glue to want to set up. In the mean time, I've been working on restoring Scott's helmet. Enclosed are pictures from 1982 of the actual helmet, pictures during the sanding process and right now with the first coats of primer. In 5 days I can add the first coat of RED paint. I guess the good news about the weather, I don't get any bugs in the paint... LOL

 

For the last week or so, I have been gluing and screwing new sponson batten in place. As you might be able to tell, I have all but one of the 9 new battens glued and screwed down. It is just to cold for the epoxy to want to set up and ME. Jim you waited to long to FLY up from Texas to help me cut the sponson runners.... LOL

 

I have also started sanding the cockpit and engine cowlings. What you see in the picture represents about 2.5 hours of sanding and it is the smallest cowling piece (thank you Nate for your input).

 

The picture of Scott driving the boat is the actual helmet I'm restoring, attached is a current picture of the helmet after I sanded it, waiting for me to fill all the chips and scratches from sitting around waiting it's next race, and the last picture of the helmet is with two coats of primer. It will have to sit and cure for a while, then I will shoot the first two coats of RED, wait five more days and shot another coupe of coats.

 

I still have a lot of sanding and shaping to do on the sponson battens before the okoume can be attached. I will be diverting my attention (if the weather warms up a little) to the back of the boat and remove 4' of the bottom, install a new transom and new bottom section.

 

I maybe done for a little while - Baby It's COLD outside and inside the shop.....