March i6, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
341 
Ticks fromj^the Ship’s Clock. 
U. S. Senator Dodson will introduce a bill 
which provides that it shall be unlawful to use 
a boat propelled by gas, gasolene, naphtha or 
similar explosive medium unless the same is pro¬ 
vided with an underwater exhaust or muffler, to 
muffle in a reasonable manner the noise of the 
explosion. The, provisions of the bill apply only 
to tidal waters and shall not apply to boats com¬ 
peting in a race held under the direction of a 
duly incorporated yacht club or racing associa¬ 
tion. The penalty for violation is a fine of not 
less than $25. 
Members of Lake Champlain Y. C., at Bur¬ 
lington, Vt., are highly pleased over the accept¬ 
ance of the commodoreship of the club by Dr. 
H. Nelson Jackson, and great things are expected 
of him. Ihe doctor is an enthusiastic yachts¬ 
man, an excellent executive and eminently popu¬ 
lar among club members. A handsome new club 
house is contemplated and will probably be 
erected on the site of the house recently dam¬ 
aged by fire. This will depend somewhat upon 
whether a long time lease on the dock can be 
had from the Central Vermont R. R. The 
Champlain club has one of the finest water loca¬ 
tions among fresh water clubs. Ten miles of 
deep, protected waters with unexcelled harbor¬ 
age formed by the breakwaters built by the Gov¬ 
ernment recently. The new committees are; 
House Committee, F. E. Rodliff, Dr. E. T. 
Brown, Hobart J. Shanley; Regatta Committee, 
A. E. Jury, Chairman; J. E. Traill, Secretary; 
C. H. Jones, Dr. 0 . S. Nims and L. P. Wood. 
The International Sporting Club, of Monaco, 
announces that up to Feb. 22 entries for the 
motor boat events, taking place from April i to 
13, numbered sixty-seven boats. Entry list closed 
Feb. 29 from which final reports have not yet 
been received. 
Renovating the Hull. 
Having completed the rubbing down and any 
scraping or burning off that is to be done, we 
may turn our attention to the recoating of the 
work. The scheme to be followed depends upon 
the type of boat and her size, for, naturally, one 
would hardly expect to arrange the work in the 
same way on a small boat that can be do'ne from 
the ground all over as on a larger one that 
must be done, more or less, from the inside. 
Then, again, a good deal depends upon whether 
the finish be varnish or paint and enamel. 
To take the simplest case, that of a small open 
boat finished with varnished topsides and fittings 
and painted bottom. The first thing to do, all 
rubbing down and repairs being completed, is 
to take a little varnish and thin it down with 
aboiu half its bulk of turpentine, using it to 
“touch up’’ all particularly bare places and any 
new work. It should not be roughly applied, 
but well wmrked into the wood, so as to form 
a good key for the subsequent full coats, and it 
may pay to go pretty well all over the job with 
a coat of thin stuff when the first touch up has 
had time to dry. In the same way some rather 
thin lead paint of suitable color should be used 
to touch up any places on the bottom that look 
in want of an extra coat, and any seams that 
require restopping, for stopping will not hold in 
a .seam unless the surfaces have been painted first. 
It may be as well here to tender a little ad¬ 
vice as to the materials and appliances to be 
used by the painter. First and foremost, use 
oMy the best of materials and get good brushes. 
1 nen endeavor to be as thorough as possible in 
the work and take great care of ffle brushes and 
pots or kettles. A few extra shillings spent on 
uying a good supply of brushes and kettles in¬ 
stead of the more usual meager allowance will 
le well invested, especially when it is remem¬ 
bered that good brushes are well-nigh everlast¬ 
ing in the hands of careful men who have but 
a small amount of work for them. It is a mis¬ 
take to get very large brushes for boat work, 
and inexperienced users find a good deal of dif¬ 
ficulty in working with them. At the same 
time a decent finish cannot be made with very 
small brushes on a large surface, so that the 
happy medium should be struck. For varnish 
the best brushes are made up with copper bind¬ 
ings, but flat ones in tin bindings are used to 
a considerable extent on the score of cheapness. 
The varnish tools (tools are the small round 
1 rushes for working along the edges and in 
corners, brushes being the bigger ones for work¬ 
ing over panels, etc.) are copper bound, but paint 
tools are string bound, and paint tools and 
brushes should have a further binding of twine 
put on to shorten the effective length when new, 
the binding being taken off as the brush wears 
down. There is a good deal of knack in bind¬ 
ing a brush properly, and a painter should be 
bribed to do them, or at least instruct the 
amateur. If the topsides be finished in white, 
brushes and tools must be provided and kept for 
this color alone, and the same with enamel, 
though where there is not much to be done, one 
might use well washed out paint brushes for the 
enamel. 
Paint and ’ varnish kettles need not be very 
large, but are much to be preferred to the as¬ 
sorted pickle jars seen in most amateur paint 
shops, though^ the pickle jars with the expand¬ 
ing rubber-jointed covers are very useful for 
keeping mixed paints and varnish in being air¬ 
tight. To prevent sticking of the covers, a little 
linseed oil may be smeared on the surfaces, but 
this rots the rubber in time. Probably paints 
will be bought ready mixed, so that a large kettle 
for pumping will not be needed, though a paint 
strainer ou,ght to be used for good work. 
For priming and ground work of painted sur¬ 
faces, the ready made paints are not much use, 
and it is better to get the paint specially made 
up_ at an oil and color store or at a regular 
painter’s place, specifying that only genuine lead 
and materials must be used. The ready made 
colored paints are all right as stainers, but have 
not much lead in them, except in the better 
makes and certain colors, for white lead has 
such a powerful staining effect that it cannot be 
used except in light shades. For priming on 
bare wood that is to be finished white or any 
light shade, pink priming (that is, white lead 
paint with a little red lead added) should be 
used; for dark finish black should be added to 
make a slate color. On no account should the 
very cheap paint,s be used, especially for outside 
work _ for they simply cannot be made of good 
materials at the price sold at. 
Now, to return to our job. After the touch¬ 
ing up has dried, the stopping must be taken in 
hand. all ooen seams and cracks being filled with 
stopping of the proper shade to match the wood, 
■ though unstained stopping may be used on the 
paint work. The most usual stopping materffll 
is ordinary putty, which may be bought at any 
colorman’s shop, and is whitning and linseed oil. 
If too hard, it may be softened by working into 
it a little oil, and if too soft may be stiffened 
by the addition of powdered whitning. Before 
use a suitable quantity must be well kneaded and 
worked up to the proper consistency and stained 
to the reqirred shade with a small quantity of 
dry color; for under water work, or to toughen 
it a little white lead may be added. The stop¬ 
ping must be well pressed into the previously 
primed crevice by a flexible bladed knife and 
any surplus scraped smoothly off the surface by 
the back of the knife. 
If necessary, a second or third touch up coat 
can be given and then a full coat of varnish all 
oyer the inside work. But. if the boat is just so 
big that the inside of the bottom cannot be cov¬ 
ered from the outside of her, it may be better 
to work from the inside and paint inside first 
(anyway, the inside of lockers should be painted 
first of all), or the central parts that cannot be 
reached from outboard. It is usually reckoned 
to be better to cut the paint in up to the varnish 
than to do the paint first and have to work the 
varnish brush over the edge of the painted parts. 
So that we might paint all the middle part of 
the bottony from the keel out toward the bilges, 
then varnish the inside of topsides, next cut in 
the paint up to the lower edge of varnish line, 
and lastly, varnish the seats and other parts that 
would be liable to get smeared or rubbed if done 
at first. The gunwales will be done with the 
topsides and outside work, and will probably 
want more coats than any part of the boat, ex¬ 
cepting the rubbing pieces—which generally want 
some amount of scraping every year. 
Whenever a second coat of varnish is to be 
applied over one only just put on—that is, as 
distinct from varnish that has been on some 
time and has been rubbed down with pumice— 
the first coat must be carefully rubbed down. To 
get good results with varnish—with paint, too 
101 that matter—it is of the utmost importance 
that each coat be allowed ample time to dry and 
harden properly before the preparation for the 
next be commenced. Except in emergency, at 
least twenty-four hours should be allowed be¬ 
tween coats, and twice that time is not at all 
too much, especially in the winter or damp 
weather. The first coat having dried hard, the 
whole surface must be well smeared over with 
whitning, applied by a soft cloth (a piece of 
well washed flannel does fine, and should be 
rubbed on a chunk of whitning and applied to 
the work) and then lightly rubbed down by the 
finest glass paper. The idea of the whitning is 
to stop the gumming up of the glass paper, the 
working surface of which needs to be continu¬ 
ally changed, even with this precaution. The 
whole of the whitning must be thoroughly dusted 
off with a fairly soft brush or brushes, a pair of 
bellows or a good tyre pump being handy to get 
It out of corners, and just before starting on the 
next coat, the work should be gone over with 
a soft wash-leather that has been well washed 
out and wrung out almost dry, the object of the 
leather being to pick up any dust adhering to the 
varnish.—The Yachtsman, England. 
American Seamen’s Friend Society. 
Severe storms, followed by wrecks, were more 
prevalent this winter along the Atlantic coast 
than for many years past, according to maritime 
interests. An unusual number of shipwrecked 
and destitute men have landed in New York dur¬ 
ing the last four months. These men were 
friendless and many miles from home; they were 
without money or prospects; they needed nour¬ 
ishment and clothes. 
_ When shipwrecked and destitute seamen land 
in New York they come to the American Sea¬ 
men s Friend Society for aid. Every seaman 
has heard of this organization. He knows that 
it helps his stranded mates to their feet. The 
society has been doing this work for eighty-four 
years, regardless of race, creed or color. It has 
had more calls for aid from destitute seamen 
during the last few months than in any similar 
period in its history. That the work is a neces¬ 
sity is evident. 
To give an instance: A captain and his crew 
of three men were forced to abandon their ves¬ 
sel off Cape Hatteras. They were picked up 
and the small boat swamped as they clambered 
on board the steamship. The four men were 
landed in New York, and following the custom, 
applied to the treasurer of the American Sea¬ 
men’s Friend Society, No. 76 Wall street, for 
aid. All were suffering from shock and ex¬ 
posure. Their story was investigated, and the 
four men found deserving. They were helped, 
so far as funds permitted, with food, lodging, 
clothes and shoes. The captain was sent to his 
home in Boston, and the men to their homes in 
Norfolk, Va., where they are known and have 
better prospects for work. This is only one out 
of many similar cases that are brought to the 
society from time to time. 
