December 14, 2019
The December Sunnyland Symposium was held on December 14th at the shop of Barry West in Apopka Fl. The session started out by reviewing the work completed to date on the Chris-Craft Constellation. Barry discussed how certain bottom planks were removed in order to replace the interior skin that was rotted. He proceed to demonstrate how a tool was made to cut the damaged and oil soaked ends of the secondary frames and then new wood formed to the hull lines and scarfed in place. An interesting demonstration followed on how to remove oil from the wood by a process of repeatedly washing with mineral spirits and applying compressed air then a wash of acetone to dry out the wood. This process eventually leaves the wood surface free of oil so that epoxy or 5200 will adhere.




On to the second phase of the aqua board that is being built. Terry Fiest explained how as simple as the board may look, due to the various angles that are required it is actually an engineering challenge to reverse engineer it. Since the last session all the parts were rough cut and now will be shaped to their final form before assembly. The real challenge will be cutting the two covering pieces on the front of the board to angles required.



The session ended with a tour of Barry’s yard and discussion of some of his other projects. Barry has designed and built many displays for Universal Studios.