My New Friend is a Pirate ARGH !

Hooray !!  gel coating and buffing is complete. The final outcome is very nice. The pictures tell the whole story. 

Here's that spot under the anchor roller , that's a complete change from the start.

This is the spot where the finger hook was at the stern ( 2holes close together).

This is the spot where some of the extra hardware and gouges were.

In all I'm very happy with the fiberglass work, all the promises were kept and Lehman's professionalism and attention to detail was over the top. I asked a lot of questions during the repair 

process and Lehman always took the time to give me an answer and not make me feel stupid for asking. I'm sure that I'll ask him to come back if I have any more work like this.

One of the things on  my list is a swim platform and in the last post I stated I had selected 

Little John's Fabrication to build it. For those of you who have not had the pleasure to meet

Little John let me draw you a picture. John is short in stature and tall in talent. If you are a mechanical sort of person you will hit it off with John in the first 30 seconds of conversation you have with him. John is the type of person that has the rare ability to see things through your words and then build what you describe.

During our first "platform" meeting John and I found  ourselves feverishly drawing pictures on note pads and just really getting into the theme of what we wanted to accomplish. We did agree that our goal was to create a  factory look , an option that no one had ever seen.   

Not that I was worried about anything, but I did wish to find out a little about John, after all I was getting ready to trust my boat and some money to him. So I went to John's web site and poked around in his photo galleries, looked at some of his mystery projects, and then it happened. I came across some pictures of John dressed like a pirate and hanging out with "Tim" the river pirate. 

Then it all became crystal clear--- John is a pirate--- My new friend is a pirate--- how cool is that?

Well all I can say is  ARGH !!! Lets be gettin on with that platform project matey.

John and I agreed that the best way to get a feel for the new platform was to get something visual 

going, he said "drawings" , I said how about a" full size cardboard pattern", John looked at me like he didn't believe me at first. I said John I've done something similar in the past your just going to gave to trust me on this one. 

This is how it started , a piece of cardboard  cut to fit the rear contour of the boat.  Before it's committed to aluminum this pattern will be cut and re-shaped a half dozen times. Under structure will be cut from cardboard and all taped together in a full size pattern that even John was more than a little impressed with. 

       

 

Next up : Help from my Friends