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March 7 - 13 Hundreds of folks showed up at Point Cabrillo for the Whale Watching weekend and the weather was spectacular! Even the whales cooperated, mom's and babies heading North but Monday the rain returned and hammered down. A perfect time to go to the Four Sisters Woodworking shop in Fort Bragg and mill the new wood for the Watch Room walls and floor.
Stefan is one of the "Sisters" of this shop and here he is checking the dimensions of some of the first of over 600 linear feet of vertical grain fir we ran through the joiner, thickness planer and finally the table saw to make the tongue and grooves.
Tuesday, back to the Lantern and the installation of the Smoke Hood. Here you can see the Rosette and hanger rods (in black) and the Smoke Cap and the upper part of the Smoke hood. The little white sleeves, soldered to the Smoke Hood (that the rods come down through) help insure that any water that may come down the chimney, drip onto the Smoke Cap and run off onto the Smoke Hood will not be able to travel down the hanger rods and onto the Fresnel lens.
Here is a view of the completed assembly with the Smoke Hood sitting in place on the radial Spider Rods. The little black ring in the center is where the top of the Fresnal Lens will attach! Stefan is making the final adjustments.
Windows! Remember I keep saying "Next week we do windows"? Well, this week we finally did! Here I am applying black Silicone caulk with what must be the worlds biggest cake decorator to the "rabbit" in the bronze window castings. We masked off the inside edge with blue masking tape to keep the "squeeze out" off the bronze when we installed the windows. It took most of three days to finish the trial fit of the windows, grind some more off the windows for proper clearance, caulk, install the window and then caulk again and put in place the bronze window stops that hold the windows in place.
By noon Friday all the windows were finally in place except for the door window and the triangle shaped window right above the door. We will install them when the door has had it's final fitting. We left the little square foam pads on the windows to help remind us that "We now have windows", something we have not had since early November!
Moving right along... Deck railings. Here is one of the rusted out "intersections" of the former deck railing. A wee pile of the former railing lay outside behind the temporary shed. Pitiful, just pitiful, but look!
Friday afternoon we started installing and "tacking up" the new deck railing.
It is going to be spectacular! In this closer image you can see the deck flange (where the upright mounts to the deck), the three cast "intersections", the top ornamental ball and the wrought iron curly-cues. After the welds are completed (295 welds!) we will finish priming them with zinc, then apply the epoxy primer and when that is cured; the final black finish. You can see the plywood we have covering and protecting the deck. We cut out a notch to clear the holes in the deck for each upright (16 places). After the welding is done a second flange will be slipped on the protruding pipe, on the underside of the deck, and then a 1-1/4" pipe cap will be screwed onto the bottom of the pipe to draw the assembly up tight against the welded top flange. Vulcen sealant will be used on the faces of both upper and lower deck flange before tightening to keep water out of the holes through the deck castings. Hopefully, this railing will last a long time.
Meanwhile, Ginny's Fresnel lens polishing party has moved out to a picnic table left over from the whale watching weekend. Infact, the table still works... "Thar she blows"! The woman on the left is the wife of a couple from Sebastopol who came up for the Whale Watching Weekend, heard about the Fresnel restoration project, and decided to stay on for a week and volunteer their time helping out. What a great way to spend their vacation, meet interesting people, hang out in a beautiful area and put some energy into an interesting project. Hooray for them! |
