Vintage Boat Preservation
The forward section of the port rubrail just could not be saved. Here you will view how the hull itself can serve as the pattern for steam bending a replacement. Once cured, the blank was shaped by hand to fit the ever-changing radius, one that is longer at the top than at the bottom of the rub rail.
Watch the crew battle against gravity as we attempt to flip this heavy, very flat rocket.
The Drake is a 26′ Lyman Cruisette – Hull # RC1086. The Snake Mountain Boatworks crew spent the winter preserving her to the condition she was in when she left the Sandusky, Ohio factory in 1967. Our biggest challenge was completely rebuilding her deck and gunwale framing, followed by milling out and installing seamed, plank teak decks that matched the specs of her original build sheet. In this video, the Drake is emerging from her winter quarters, gleaming and eager to once again grace the waters of Lake Champlain.
At over eight by nine feet, and recovered in glistening new Stamoid, reinstalling the Drake’s roof over eight feet onto the cabin, without marring the new teak decks nerve-wracking. But it is now in place and the Drake’s complete preservation is nearing completion.
Lymans, as well as any other antique or classic wooden boats depend upon their gunwales for structural stiffness. Gunwales gone bad translate into a hull that can flex in all the wrong places, get increasingly out of true relative to the keel and ultimately become unseaworthy.
The Lyman Cruisette should have oak gunwale framing comprised of laminated courses. This boat’s framework had been “restored” using chunks of softwood a varying lengths and widths that were pieced in, sometimes not even fastened to anything. We are replacing them completely.
We are replacing rotted sections, followed by veneering them in.
Removing the 26′ Lyman Cruisette from its trailer and lowering it onto boat dollies gives us easier access to the boat as we begin installing the new plywood, followed by seamed teak plank decks. It will also give us better access to the boat below its waterline, where we must remove all existing paint and treat the surfaces with Smith’s Penetrating Epoxy Sealer and then apply Lyman tan bottom paint.
It’s three days following the Lyman’s arrival. The cabin roof and house have been removed. We now face removing the decking, a combination of seamed teak planks that were glued to 3/8″ plywood, with the latter in turn secured to the framework beneath with 3M 5200.
