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September 27th Photos Page |
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Sorry it's taken me so long to get some new photos posted here, but don't think that means I haven't been onboard working on a regular basis, in fact I've been onboard eight times since my last posting on July 5th. As some of you may recall, back in late April we hauled an old compensating binnacle up to our shop to begin restoring it. The first photo below shows how it looked when we started. The rest of the photos show in chronological order the progress we've made on that project since then. In addition to keeping the brass along the tour routes shining, each Saturday one or two of us would work in the shop on cleaning up and repainting the binnacle. A project like this takes many Saturdays to complete, but we are finally nearing the end. When it is finished the curator is going to put in on display in the Visitors Center. Our goal is to finish this project and move it to the Visitors Center (located on the pier) before the weather turns too cold. It's going to be a huge task to carry this puppy down three decks to the Main Deck, then into an elevator and finally give it a ride to the Visitors Center, we'll all be glad when this project is completed and it is on display for all to see. If anyone out there has any experience working on one of these compasses I would love to talk to you about a few things, please send me an e-mail if you have any expertise. I'm also happy to report that the Brass Team has had some new volunteers join the gang recently, and that's great because we can sure use all the help we can get!! I hope everyone had a great Summer, I know I did!! The ships crew was onboard in September for their annual reunion, I know they enjoyed their return home!! My next volunteer day onboard will be October 4th, hope to see you there!! |
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| July
12th - A Jewel in the Rough...
This is the binnacle as it appeared on the day our serious restoration efforts began in earnest. |
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| July
12th - One of the gang beginning to strip away the many layers of paint from the old weathered binnacle. |
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| July 12th - The end of the first days efforts, it's a good start... |
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| July
26th - Two Saturdays later, the layers of paint are gone,
revealing a solid brass cast base, not what we were expecting for sure! |
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| July
26th - In addition to the base there were plenty of small brass fixtures, hardware and plates to be cleaned and shined. |
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| July
26th - The end of another days work, won't be long until we'll be applying some new primer to the base. |
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| August 9th - One of the "Balls" in a vice, sporting a fresh coat of paint. |
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| August
9th -While all the work on the base was going on, myself and others worked on cleaning up and polishing the elaborate brass top. It's starting to look pretty good! |
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| August
9th - The base, sporting a fresh coat of primer and with the compass and some of its inner workings back in place. |
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| August 9th - A shot of the other side of the freshly primed base. |
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| September
13th - Getting close to being finished, here the final coats of paint have been applied and most of the items we removed have been shinned up and put back in place. |
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| September
27th - You may have noticed in the photos above that the top was missing its glass "window". Today we installed a new piece of glass into the top. Here is a photo of it sitting on our workbench while the sealer around the glass cures. |
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| September
27th - Clowning around in the shop, the expression on ole Frank's face says it all! He bought the new glass and did the installation into the top, great job buddy! |
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| September
27th - Shot
of the vintage compass sitting back in the base. It is low on fluid and we're in the process of acquiring some to fill it up. It still needs a little more work, but it too will soon be finished. |
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| September
27th - The
end of another day... It's taken twelve Saturdays to get from the first photo above to this point, the transformation is amazing! It will be a great addition to the Visitors Center for sure! |
