My good friend Bill bought this project in 1982 and did a whole lot of work to it years ago, but hadnt touched it in 20+years.
It was built in England in 1919, about 27 ft long, 5 ft wide, without the 1500 lb lead keel, it weighs about 800 lbs. The hull is made of mahogany fastened with copper rivets to its ribs. Oak for the heavy bits like the deck.
The boat came from England to Halifax in 1946 on the deck of the Haida as she returned to Canada after WWII. She was raced around Halifax for years, then stored by someone until Bill bought it, he would have been in his very early 20s at the time. He lusted after wooden boats, not cars.
He dug it out of storage yesterday and invited us to his boat shop for a viewing, his boat shop was built about the same time as this boat. He plans on working on it this year. The hull gets cleaned of existing finishes, sanded down, then epoxied, then painted. It was built on the Thames for day racing, Bill says there would have been 15-20 built to this design to be raced in a class against each other.
Ill try to keep this project up to date with pictures as it progresses.
Don
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63 Parisienne sport coupe (The Big GTO), black, maroon interior, 409 4 speed; former owner of a 59 El Camino, 63 Corvette SWC, 62 Chev Bel Air SC. 1963- Pontiac top selling car in Canada
Mahone Bay, NS Still not old enough to need an automatic
63 Parisienne sport coupe (The Big GTO), black, maroon interior, 409 4 speed; former owner of a 59 El Camino, 63 Corvette SWC, 62 Chev Bel Air SC. 1963- Pontiac top selling car in Canada
Mahone Bay, NS Still not old enough to need an automatic
63 Parisienne sport coupe (The Big GTO), black, maroon interior, 409 4 speed; former owner of a 59 El Camino, 63 Corvette SWC, 62 Chev Bel Air SC. 1963- Pontiac top selling car in Canada
Mahone Bay, NS Still not old enough to need an automatic
63 Parisienne sport coupe (The Big GTO), black, maroon interior, 409 4 speed; former owner of a 59 El Camino, 63 Corvette SWC, 62 Chev Bel Air SC. 1963- Pontiac top selling car in Canada
Mahone Bay, NS Still not old enough to need an automatic
Luv the craftsmanship of these old boats! Every piece is cut, chiseled/filed and sanded to fit. My Chris is 1946..but still can't believe the craftsmanship! Keep us posted!
Wood- a very good question MC, his search for good wood is a big part of his projects.
This is a picture of 2 pieces of local pine he glued together to show the difference in the growth rings from a piece from 2013 and from 1740, the 2013 piece has about 6 years of growth, hard to count them on the old piece. The 1740 pine came from an old barn that was used as a stagecoach barn back when the road to Halifax went through here. The density of the old piece and the new piece is obvious- the new pine rots very quickly in a marine environment.
The climate change is obvious when you see the growth rings?
-- Edited by DonSSDD on Sunday 11th of February 2024 08:14:57 AM
63 Parisienne sport coupe (The Big GTO), black, maroon interior, 409 4 speed; former owner of a 59 El Camino, 63 Corvette SWC, 62 Chev Bel Air SC. 1963- Pontiac top selling car in Canada
Mahone Bay, NS Still not old enough to need an automatic
63 Parisienne sport coupe (The Big GTO), black, maroon interior, 409 4 speed; former owner of a 59 El Camino, 63 Corvette SWC, 62 Chev Bel Air SC. 1963- Pontiac top selling car in Canada
Mahone Bay, NS Still not old enough to need an automatic
The difference in the grain is wild. Perhaps he could find some old growth trees that had been downed by the hurricanes?
Another thing I was wondering about is where the wood for the boat originally came from. It was built in England, but England doesn't strike me as a place where there would be a lot of forests left, even in 1919, to harvest wood from. The mahogany would have had to come from somewhere closer to the equator, but even the rest of the wood probably didn't come from England.
It's wild when you think of the larger wooden pieces would likely be much harder to find nowadays (more specifically for larger wooden ships), given that those super tall, large around old growth trees are not so easy to find anymore. Just finding a mast for a large sailing ship must be a chore now (and super expensive). That Home Depot board looks like it would have been harvested from a smallish tree (though it's just a representation on their website).
Interesting project for sure. I'm glad that there are still people carrying on the craftsmanship from days past, that otherwise would just be forgotten.
As a side note, I recall when they were rebuilding St. John's Anglican in Lunenburg after the fire, they had to find people with the woodworking skills to be able to authentically recreate the woodwork that had been lost in the fire. That church would have been built by people with shipbuilding skills, so apparently it was quite a challenge to find people who had the appropriate skillsets. In the end, they did a fantastic job, and faithfully rebuilt the church such that it would be hard to tell it from the original.
Wooden masts are made by laminating smaller pieces, that one picture is 3 pieces. The mahogany likely came from somewhere in the British Empire, definitely some place warmer than England. A lot of it came/comes from South America or Asia or Africa.
He even sources his oak from around the Carolinas, the mast for the last Bluenose II rebuild came from old growth BC Douglas Fir.
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63 Parisienne sport coupe (The Big GTO), black, maroon interior, 409 4 speed; former owner of a 59 El Camino, 63 Corvette SWC, 62 Chev Bel Air SC. 1963- Pontiac top selling car in Canada
Mahone Bay, NS Still not old enough to need an automatic
