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March 21 - 27 Monday, with the aid of hand-held lights, we apply the second layer of primer to the deck rails and curly-cues.
They look real nice. We did not install the last railing section, immediately in front of the Lantern door, in order to maintain access to the Lantern while working on it in the temporary shed and also for later when the Lantern is back on top of the Lighthouse. The Fresnel lens parts will be lifted up the outside of the Lighthouse and brought into the Lantern Room for assembly. Once that activity is over the last section of railing will be installed, welded and painted.
We finally got the door alignment problem solved and I installed the door sheet steel liners, handles, latch and window. These images have some distortion due to the camera. The door is curved in cross section but really is straight up and down! Wednesday, March 24th, brought heavy rain and we gave up after a couple of hours. Way too wet to paint.
Thursday we put up the scaffolding and removed the remaining gussets from around the top of the Watch Room.
We numbered the individual gusset pieces, which are old growth Redwood, and piled them up in the temporary shed. They will be taken away to be stripped of their many layers of paint.
Here is the new Lantern ladder, built to original specifications.. The original one had rusted away and was missing. This ladder will hook onto the Lantern roof rail to facilitate cleaning the outside of the windows.
Friday we applied the finish paint to the roof, roof railing, Architrave, Parapet and deck railings.
In the dark shed the gloss black Lantern has really disappeared. The plywood, covering the lantern deck will be removed to allow installation of the lifting bolts. Once the Lantern is back on top of the Lighthouse the lifting bolts will be removed and the through holes filled with Belzona. The deck will then get its finish coat of paint. Next week the crane will arrive and finally lift the Lantern out into the sunshine and onto the top of the Lighthouse. Lift off should happen Tuesday, March 30th or Wednesday, March 31st. It all depends on the weather now. Cross your fingers! |
