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The Building of Old Codger


Chick Ludwig

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Good grief! Your lady outa be REAL happy with you! I did resurface Miss Debbie's counter tops with mica and wood varnished edges. But there's much more stuff she wants. And I gotta re-do HER boat, the luminum "family" boat before starting my micro power cruiser. Too lazy to row. We paddle a bit with out plastic kadiyacs. Wanna build a wood one, or maybe a 1- place canoe for myself. Those old plastic jobbers from Walmart just ain't got no class!

 

I built a narrow "pirogue" with a lot of rocker once. Built a plug and mold before testing it . It was VERY tender!!! I figured that it was because of having too much rocker.

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Wow, you've been building boats for fifty years?  Believe me Chick, it shows. 

 

Fifty years ago, I was in Viet Nam.  Boat building was not part of my universe then...or for forty nine of the fifty years since.  But I'm hooked now; and you're my guru.  Late at night, when everyone is asleep, I sneak into a dark room, turn on the computer and drool over the photos of your OB20 #1 on the B and B website.  My goal in life is to complete a boat that is somewhat recognizable as the same kind of boat.

 

Carter

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PAR, actually that's not quite correct. But I was there to help Noah build the Ark. And I was a stowaway and survived the flood. That's also how I know that there were dinosaurs on the Ark. By-the-way, the word "gopherwood" that the Bible says the Ark was built from is actually a mistranslation from the original Hebrew word. With my extraordinary investigative skills, I have discovered that the actual translation is "fiberglass".

 

Through God's instruction, Noah was the originator of fiberglass boat building. After spending so many years building the Ark, Noah and his family swore that they never even wanted to hear the words "boat" or "fiberglass" again. He did employ several of the locals to help him and his sons with the building, but obviously, the knowledge was lost as they all died in the flood.

 

Carter,  I built my first boat when I was 16. Then in my 20s, I built my own outboard race boats from wood. I didn't get back to wood boat building until I met Graham about 20 years ago, but have built several since then. But I did build fiberglass boats for most of the intervening years. That's why I'm such an expert on the history of fiberglass.

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I envy and appreciate the knowledge stored up by you and PAR and all the others.  I may have started late and progressing slowly, but I have no deadline and there's nothing else (most of the time) I would rather be doing.  And who knows, when this boat is complete, Utah might be a sea again.

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Chick,

Don’t be fibbing and exaggerating. Everyone knows gopherwood means plywood. Duh. It’s just that it was domestic ply, made from local cedars, and not imported, exotic ply, so nobody wants to give it any mention. :) Hehehe.

 

Also, does fiberglass boat building count as boat building? Harhar.

 

Peace,

Robert 

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Doggone it, Tiger! Who's story IS this any way? YOU weren't there. it was FIBERGLASS! EVERYONE knows that Chris Columbus was the first to build his ships from plywood. He had to use that because the Europeans had already cut all of the big trees down, so none were big enough to get big boards out of. First he had to invent a saw that would peel the veneers off of the undersized trees that they had available. It took 10 men on each end of the blade to pull it back and forth as the log was turned on a big, windmill powered lathe. You ARE right about the wood being local, though. That's the whole reason he wanted to find America. To find a source for exotic trees large enough to use without resorting to the time and labor intensive plywood. I'm still researching to find what they used fro glue to bond the veneers together with. I found one, not very reliable, source that claimed that they used cow hoof glue. That's why one of his ships was lost. The glue dissolved, the plys de-laminated,  and the ship sank.

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Columbus? The dude from Ohio? He built boats from plywood cause they ain’t no TREES in Ohio. Duh.

 

Now, as to this glue, I understand they used squished bugs and horsehair, plus 152,897 tiny copper tacks per panel. Anyway, that’s what I heard. True, it WAS a pumpkin vine, not a grape vine I heard from, but still.

 

That whole business about coming to America to find plywood has just got to be made up, because everyone knows there ain’t no good plywood cut nor made here. Hehe.

 

Besides, EVERYONE knows Colombus was searching for tomatoes for his pizza pie.

 

Peace,

History Buffer :)

 

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It's great to have a reliable source of information to include in my history lessons. i hope you don't mind if I include your input in a research paper that I'm working on. I'm not so sure about your reference to the copper tacks. Sounds kinda "tacky' to me!

 

I gotta agree that fiberglass boat building is not REAL boat building, but rather, "boat assembling". At least the ones made fro a mold.

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Yes Robert, we need to pray for peace for poor old stodgy Don. He's one of those guys we used to call the "establishment". It really rocks his boat wh...hey, I made a little joke! "Rocks his boat!" Anyway,...when he finds out that all of the things he was taught back in school are not right. It takes awesome minds to accept the truth.

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