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 11th 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
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