Wood Butchering...

Saturdays are big days at the John Kushner Restoration Pavilion, the constant sound of tools and laughter fill every space within the building. There are about 30 volunteers climbing all over PT-305, working hard and enjoying every minute of it. Part of the fun on the 11^th was using a tool in a manner it was not commonly used for.

A wood planer is a tool that finishes and smoothes the surface of wood, it is faster and more uniform than sanding a large piece by hand.   Usually a flat board is fed into the planer create a smooth surface or cut the board down to the desired thickness. That Saturday, Frank and his crew were feeding a board through that looks like an elongated corkscrew.  The scene was quite impressive, five men holding onto a board that was hopelessly crooked.  Conrad even had to stand on a ladder because the board bends so sharply it’s the only way he could hold the end up.  

So why would we be putting such a strangely shaped board through the planer?  The answer is that it is a very important component of a boat’s structure called the sheer.  The sheer is the board that makes the intersection of the deck and side hull on a ship.  It runs the length of the ship on both the Port (Left) and Starboard (Right) sides.  On the 305, the sheer is a roughly 4 x 4 piece of pine.   It took a week to build this piece of PT-305, and this piece was just one half of the forward part of the sheer. 

During the war at the City Park plant, where Higgins built PT boats, there was an entire mill dedicated to prefabrication of PT boat components. Once parts were completed in the mill, they were stored on the production line, at the point at which they would be installed.  This assembly line production was one of the reasons that Higgins Industries could build a PT boat Hull in roughly one month.  It’s not that easy with the restoration of PT-305. Each major part of the basic structure takes time to build.

Away from the boat, in our own little “mill” we call the wood shop, component manufacture continues. That Saturday in the wood shop, work continued on lower hull ribs - ribs for the bottom of the boat, and deck ribs - the ribs that hold the deck up. Both of these ribs are glued out of strips of wood with a two part epoxy in order to create a curved piece of wood. The deck ribs are being built in the same manner as the original ones, long strips of wood glued together to form a curve that matches the curve of the finished deck. The hull ribs follow the same process, except when they are complete they receive ¼ inch plywood lamination on both sides that create deck ribs that are far stronger than solid pieces of wood. Nothing is easy on the PT-305 restoration, it takes 12 hours for the glue to set up, many more hours to create jigs, cut and prep wood to assemble into the main structural components.

With most of the basic structure in place, other crews could begin new tasks. In the lazarette, the last compartment in the 305, Kali continued the process of finish painting. The finish paint provides an essential layer of protection, keeping water out of the wood, and must be applied properly before further fitting out limits access to the compartment.  While the external parts of the boat will be painted with spray guns, the inside will all be hand painted.  

            In the engine room, the steel crew, led by Jim, carried out the task of installing all the reinforcements. These are aluminum plates that exist mainly in the engine room. Their primary purpose is to hold the weight of the 3 Packard 4M-2500 engines and assist in the transfer of energy from the propellers into the structure of the 305 while it is under way. With the installation of these reinforcements the next big step can be made, installation of the mounts.

            With the engine mounts getting closer to installation we are that much closer to needing engines to place on them. Since 2009, when the physical work on the boat began, the engine crew, led by Randy, has been taking apart the three partially complete engines from PT-659 and working on bringing parts together to build one complete engine. The Packard V-12 4M-2500 engine is a very complicated engine; taking 3 engines, in various states of disrepair and missing parts, completely apart and cleaning everything has taken months. It has taken almost as long to take all the freshly restored parts and assemble an engine that is roughly 80% complete. This Saturday, the engine crew finished assembling the geared supercharger that will be installed on our newly restored engine. Now we only have two more to go…

Running the sheer through the planer.  Photos copyright of Kali Martin.

Post by Josh and Kali

First Post - An Introduction

In 1997, a group of men gathered at a small wood shop on Foucher Street, just yards from the Mississippi River in New Orleans. They had decided that the city of New Orleans had gone long enough without fully recognizing the achievements of Andrew Jackson Higgins during the Second World War.  They wanted to build a reminder of what Higgins had created and how he contributed to the war effort and the city of New Orleans.  This group eventually built a Higgins LCVP from the ground up, and completely restored a Higgins LCP(L) to its war-time condition. The Higgins Boat Society, the forerunner to the PT-305 restoration crew, prided itself on completely restoring the landing craft to their original conditions, using the same materials and techniques as often as possible. The Higgins boat society was just getting warmed up when it decided to restore a Higgins PT boat.

The Patrol Torpedo boat served in the US Navy during the Second World War. The concept behind this weapon is a light and fast craft, capable of delivering a knockout blow with a torpedo to any size capital ship. Their initial role as a torpedo delivery platform remained throughout the war; however, the boats began to encounter ships that were not suitable torpedo targets. PT Squadrons adapted to this role by increasing their armament, becoming fast gunboats. Pound for pound, PT boats became some of most heavily armed ships during World War II. Their impact was felt from the sudden jerk of a torpedo explosion to the violence of a high-speed gun run.

Working in close conjunction with the National World War II Museum the former Higgins Boat Society became the PT-305 restoration volunteers when the World War II Museum acquired Higgins built PT-305 in 2007. This is a complex and impressive restoration that could not take place without the combined efforts of the National World War II Museum and the remarkable talent and dedication of the PT-305 restoration volunteers.

This webpage will be used to tell the story of the restoration through the eyes of two of the volunteers on the project.  We will look back at the project, and through the next few posts catch up to the present.  We hope to receive your questions and comments as we share the story of restoring PT-305.  

This is the crew in about 2010.  Photo Copyright of Ron Moranto.


Post by Josh and Kali