Sunday, March 21, 2010

New article on scow trip










I am attaching here a short article, recently published, on the upcoming scow trip. This article was done in conjunction with the 2010 14th Annual Alberta Paleontological Society meetings in Calgary, Alberta on March 13th. There I gave a 1/2 hour talk on the scow expedition and construction progress. I have tried posting such things before on the net and inevitably the pages get mixed up. If this happens here, just use the page numbers at the bottom of each image to sort the jumble out. Looks like it loaded in reverse order. Can some of you please let me know you got this OK as I seem to be having other computer issues of late. Double-click on each image to get a larger, readable version.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Expedition washing machine



Here is the washing machine that will be used on the expedition. Got it at an antique shop years ago. It was nice and warm outside today so decided to pull it out and give it a good going over. My daughter and I put some water in and it promptly leaked like a seive! Have begun identifying where the holes are and plugging these. Also revarnishing it in places, replacing some screws, etc. It used to have a brass piston pump on top of the lid that fitted onto a garden hose. We won't have pressurized water or a garden hose in the field so I am converting this machine to hand operation. Any parts that need modifying are not being changed, but removed and replaced with new machined parts to the same specifications that are altered as required. This way, when the trip is over, I can restore the machine back to its original condition. Uncertain as to the vintage of this machine, but it is close in style to the 1915-1925 period. The brass pump had a part inside with an embossed "7-21" stamp, suggesting a July 1921 manufacturing date.


We are hoping to resume scow and rowboat construction in about a month.