The shipyard dock buildings as we found them in 1973; formerly a fish company building from the  1940's.  Since then we have re-roofed them twice, replaced all the windows, most of 

the doors  and trim, sided the  buildings with cedar shingles, and rebuilt the 

entire  wharf and most of the foundations. Last coat of paint went on the trim earlier 

this month.

Indoors this time of year

Overhauling our small boats keeps us close to the shop stove. While Sarah scrapes, sands, paints, and varnishes, repairs usually fall to me. For example, it was time to replace the knee braces on Roscoe's seats. Rather than raid an apple orchard to find natural grown knees, I steamed up some straight grained oak and bent the pieces over a form or jig.

Epoxying a piece of pine to the back makes a blank for a knee 

to replace the old one in the picture

 

Clean it up a bit by running it through the planer after some trimming

Then fit and fasten it in place, and paint a few times.

We use a lot of masking tape this time of year; blue and yellow.

Now that Sarah has those boats all done (right down to oars and oarlocks), it's time for the basket case: a nice fifteen foot pulling boat built and repaired many times over the past thirty years or so.  Used in fresh water and left outside a lot, half of the ribs needed replacing along with the backbone from sternpost to stem.

After framing and refastening

And if you think this is just a comprehensive paint job, here are old and new parts 

for the stem knee and fore gripe in progress; locust replacing red oak.