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Unfortunately, this is what eventually happened to the R101.

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True story: Being a balloon pilot and interested is all lighter than air craft I once ordered a book called "Blimp" from a mail order bookstore, which is about the Goodyear blimps. A few days later I...

I found a couple of leftover scraps of the tramp fabric, before and after treatment. I wouldn't really call the grey version stiff, but it definitely is a bit stiffer and has a bit more body than the...

It will if you don't rinse it enough. Otherwise, not really - at least with the filament Dacron 3-strand. You always want to start with a color that is darker than your final result because a fair...

Don't know. You would just have to try it and see. I used it on various diameters of the NER filament Dacron, on Dacron 1/8" leech line and on polyester sail twine and it worked great. The fuzzy...

Other than bikes and Lionel trains, my favorite was my Robot Commando. It would throw small orange balls with its arms and the head would open and shoot a rocket out the top. The rocket had a red...

The stained filament Dacron seems to hold up to UV and weather pretty well. My wife used some out in the garden for holding up her berry bushes and over about ten years it faded some, but it still...

Dock lines are usually nylon, not polyester (Dacron) or polypropylene because they don't stretch for shock absorption as well as nylon does. Whether or not that is important for a dinghy is up to...

Mine came from a big box store, where you could buy 4' or 2' lengths. Then there are connectors to join them to the desired length which look like this, as well as end caps fpr the ends of a run.

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This might help

https://archive.org/details/grumman-gunter-sail-rig-instructions/mode/2up

and these might also

https://www.ebay.com/itm/275635066617
...

I remember going kayaking with a friend in his VW bus. Out on the interstate I noticed that the front wall on the outside was the same piece of metal as the front wall on the inside. Not much of a...

Take your school loans and buy as much gold as you can with that money, because we can buy it in jewelry class for $32 per ounce.

Console TV

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Having owned that boat for 50 years and rebuilt it twice (including replacing the gunwales and decks) I can confirm that you are wrong and the photo is not lying. It is even visible in the shape of...

Abrupt upsweep? Really? If this canoe has an abrupt upsweep you ain't seen nothing yet.

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This is a shot from Adney and Chapelle's book "The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America"...

Some hollow along the sheer line at the ends isn't unusual on traditional-looking canoes, even those with rather utilitarian end profiles like my 1972 Old Town Guide. Canoes with higher, more...

A stripper with or without the first (outer) layer of fiberglass is way too floppy to be either symmetrical or asymmetrical. Unless you have built one (or more) you wouldn't believe just how mushy...

I think you will find that strippers are pretty floppy until you get both inner and outer glass on and some structure in the way of at least temporary thwarts in. Chances are that trying to correct...

Can't help with a supplier, but you had better add "breathable" to the description. Sealing wooden boats inside totally waterproof covers is a recipe for trouble.

The bookshelves in my office:

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In the kitchen above the microwave and all of the dog treats for Max. N Scale

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A couple of shots from Albuquerque one year.

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The strangest "hobby" that I ever saw was a dorm roommate assigned to me one semester in college. As the semester went on, hair combs started to show up pinned to the bulletin board over his desk....

Epoxy resin does not have enough tensile strength to stabilize thick planking, especially under water. This is why cold molded boats use multiple layers of 1/8" thick veneer, each layer sealed and...

There is also a certain amount of wear that goes on inside the machine, so problems can be just something needing adjustment, or problems caused by wear. There are two main reasons why factories sell...

G scale

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Yeah, considering the investment involved you would want to be flying several feet above the surface.

Wish you could cast your lure out 100 yards or more to cover more water? You can get a clip-on attachment for your drone that will do it. It has a small hook on the bottom where you can hang your...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQWwZQxSwoM

Most industrial (or semi-industrial) machines are designed and set up to do one thing only. The person using it does one specific step in the production of a product all day long. The machines are...

This is not true. I was sent the specs and modification schematics for the Sailrite LSZ-1 before it went into production, so that I could serve as a patent witness if needed. The Thompson Miniwalker...

Back in the dark ages when I was a sculpture major in college, we would remove the molds from the original (clay) about a day after the plaster had set up (white molding plaster is what we used) and...

We got a ride in a caboose a couple of years ago, which was pretty neat. One of those "every kid wanted to do it" things.

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Inside and the cupola seats up top

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View from the...

Some of the canvas waterproofing compounds also contain a substance to prevent mildew which can come off on you in use - arsenic.

CN and former DMIR locos pulling an ore train on a cold morning in northern Wisconsin.

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one of mine

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Big Boy, up close and personal

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As I said before, they still work just fine. You are welcome to your opinion as well as to post some of the sails you have made. If you are worried about the design phase of sailmaking needing to be...

That sort of thing has worked well for a very long time and still works just fine. There is nothing nonsensical about it. The sequences to design a jib properly are spelled out in post number six of...

My hearing is still quite good, though I've had tinnitus for decades and it is always audible no matter what else is going on, even above things like the lawnmower or backpack leaf blower. Last month...

We were in a hurry and stopped at McDonalds last week for the first time in a couple of years. Ordered two Quarter Pounders with cheese and two medium fries, nothing else. The bill was $18. Hell will...

This one and The Zombies "She's Not There" were the reasons I wanted to become a bass player. As soon as I could afford it, I bought a Hagstrom bass, but it was a couple of years before I could...

I'm not a varnish expert, but I'd be willing to bet that the only real way to fix this properly is to take it back down to bare wood and give it a uniform new varnish finish.

Excellent!

Sunforger is most likely treated with a fluorocarbon, rather than silicone. It is good stuff, but the 3% shrinkage factor was enough to eventually keep me from using it on anything that had to fit...

Territorial dispute......

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There is always enough static present that the last step in any sail project was always to hang it up by the corners and vacuum the room and then vacuum the...

That's been my "regular group" since about 1971, though every once in a while we take a decade off. :) I've never had much desire to play with anyone else. I know these guys and what they want from...

I found a couple more samples. The first is a fretless Hofner Beatle Bass that I had for a while. I eventually decided that I liked the sound of my fretted Hofner better and I sold the fretless one....

Pretty neat! I have a Pedulla Buzz bass that makes those sounds, but for the stuff my band has generally played that whiney sound doesn't usually fit into the mix very well. I played one of my other...

Yep, that's looking better.

The luff (front edge) on a balanced lugsail is parallel to the mast and the tack corner (lower front corner of the sail) is out ahead of the mast. In this case, that would drop the aft end of the...

Scot and Peter Spectre suggested that I might enjoy the forum after they published my book, so I checked it out. I'm more of an upstairs guy than an official bilge rat, but I read most of the stuff...