Article reprinted from WoodenBoat Magazine®
March/April 2000
Steve Thomas drives a restored Fay & Bowen launch on Lake Tahoe.
BY BROOKS TOWNES
Steven Thomas sat basking in sunshine and success
aboard a 32’ Albany triple-cockpit runabout at Lake Tahoe Yacht Club’s
Concourse d’Elegance. He’d just restored the 1923 Albany in partnership
with Alan Firth, president of the Southern Pacific Transportation Company
(the old Southern Pacific Railroad). Life was sweet for Steven Thomas
that day, and it was about to get sweeter.
“I was sitting in the
boat, and Tom Gentry came up with a couple of other people. They were all
dressed in mountain biking clothes. He asked me if the boat was for
sale,” Thomas said. (The Albany, incidentally, is one of only three then
listed in the Antique & Classic Boat Society registry; it is powered by a
Scripps straight six, making nearly 3oo hp.) It was indeed for sale and
Gentry bought it on the spot. “I just about went through the ceiling of
the boat!” Thomas said. “Here I was face to face with a real celebrity
in my world, and…!”
Picture right.
Thomas poses next to a replanking job.
Gentry, a Honolulu
millionaire real estate developer, was a varsity offshore powerboat racer
who was starting to collect old boats. At the time, he held the super
boat speed record of 148.238 mph and was trying for 150 mph. He was a big
name in offshore racing and on Lake Tahoe, partly because that’s where he
began his boat-racing career. In contrast---even his restorations had
been winning awards---Steve Thomas was from Redding, California, a fair
sized city near Lake Shasta that’s often confused by big city folks with
Red Bluff, a cow town. “At Tahoe some thought I sleep in a shack with my
dog,” Thomas grinned. Still, meeting Gentry was something of an event.
Gentry had plans: He
intended to build an enviable collection of classic and antique powerboats
and create a museum for them in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or may be Las
Vegas. Thomas, though star-struck, told Gentry he wanted to be a part of
that plan---“and he hired me on the spot.”
The relationship went
well. Gentry gave Thomas so much business he practically became the
Redding’s shop’s only customer. At one time, Thomas pointed to six Gentry
boats sitting in his shop that were worth all in all some $500,000---and
Gentry did not rush the restoration work or want any corners cut. He was
the patron restorers dream of. It all went very nicely until 1995 when
Gentry flipped a race boat off Key West and was pinned underwater for more
than three minutes. He was rescued, but remained in a coma until his
death two years later. It was tough losing a pal and patron like Gentry.
Thomas missed his friend---and his own future seemed to roll onto its
beam-ends: Gentry had told Thomas he wanted him to run the museum. “He
was going to have his race boats in there and the antiques as well. It
could have been a life-ling thing. I looked forward to running that
museum. He was going to move me down to Southern California or Vegas….
I’d put all my eggs in one basket, but for a gamble like that I’d do it
again---in a second,” said Thomas. “It took a while to spool up again
after Gentry’s demise. I worked for Tom for almost two years and didn’t
take any local work in, therefore the other shops picked up the clients.”
During their too-short
relationship of some 18 months, Thomas refinished or totally restored for
Gentry a 1924 Fay & Bowen launch (Thomas’s second Fay & Bowen job), a 1913
Fry launch, a 1922 26’ Hacker Gold Cup racer, a 1934 18’ Electra Craft
canoe-sterned electric launch with a surrey top, and a 1928 32’
Vonderworth commuter, and he maintained the Albany.
Picture right: A 1923 Albany
triple-cockpit runabout rests in the shop. Restored by Steve Thomas,
in partnership with Alan Firth, the 32' boat shifted Thomas's career into
high gear.
Starting Over
When
word spread that Thomas Fabrication & Boatworks was available again, it
didn’t take long for new business to appear, and this summer Thomas said
this is the best business year he’s ever had, with boats coming from near
and far for new bottoms, total restorations or rebuilds----even for just a
plank repair or varnish. Without sounding boastful, Thomas said, “I’ve
had stuff go all over North America, and stuff sent in form Florida,
Washington D.C., New York, Canada, Illinois. It’s really flattering when
you consider there are probably a couple hundred restoration shops in this
country, maybe more.”
Picture right: This
1954 Chris-Craft Racing Runabout, another Thomas restoration, won first
place at Lake Tahoe Yacht Club's Concours d'Elegance.
His boats have taken
numerous first-place prizes at prestigious judgings. Several have won
first place in their categories at Lake Tahoe. “Last year, three boats I
did won a first, second and a third in three separate classes.” A 1954
19’ Chris-Craft Racing Runabout took first in its class, a 1964 19’
Century Utility took second in its category, and a 1914 Fay & Bowen launch
snagged third in another class. It is startling to learn that Thomas
started out building aluminum-sided travel trailers and motor homes. That
was in his dad’s retirement business where Thomas began working as a
teenager. By his early 20’s he’d gone out on his own building
aluminum-sided houseboats---not those rentals called “kamikaze” houseboats
on pontoons that always seem to be aiming at your prized woody, but a
swanky summer-home houseboats costing up to $100,000 and measuring 15’ x
56’ and a couple of stories tall.
Though it still seems
like quite a leap from those things to making pristine a 1914 Fay & Bowen
launch, Thomas made it sound simple: “I sort of slid out of houseboats and
hooked up with Art Knolte,” a respected Redding boat builder. All sorts
of work came into Thomas’s boat works, including wooden boat repairs from
Lake Shasta, which Thomas took to Knolte’s shop “and Knolte kept me from
screwing things up. When Art retired, I took over where he left off
repairing and refinishing boats for his old customers.
Mainly, I’m
self-taught. I read and subscribe to everything I can find, and talk to
other restorers. One nice thing about this business is we all share our
problems and answers.
I
love the work.” He told a local reporter, “It’s a privilege to work on
these boats. We are preserving history. What we do will be around
forever, barring some disaster.”
Thomas has
completed over 40 major restorations had won ten first place in concourse
judgings before this summer---two more of his boats were entered at this
year’s Tahoe concourse---plus some 80 more boats have gone through his
shop for simple repairs and refinishing.
Picture above: Thomas prepared this Old Town canoe for
Tahoe's Concours d'Elegance. He replaced the original canvas with 6
oz. fiberglass and finished the hull bright, although he expected to be
"nailed" for the modifications.
----- Continued from the Home Page
How He Does It
Partly because he needs the help,
partly to perpetuate the knowledge and skills needed for first-class
restorations, Thomas sometimes hires Shasta College students and high
school youngsters who write class projects on their and Thomas’s work;
Thomas subcontracts out mechanical work and upholstering. The touch
engineering, fussy woodwork, and varnishing are his jobs alone.
“Basically, on full restorations, we start at the bottom and work up,” he
said. “ We strip everything down in the winter months and do structural
and repair work, and we sand and varnish everything before we put it back
together---then finish it again.”
At the moment there’s a
1947 25’ Sportsman Deluxe Chris-Craft utility in the shop getting 30 new
white oak frames. The boat will then be completely stripped to bare wood,
completely refastened, receive all-new wiring, leather upholstery, new
planks, and re-chroming: the works. “We’re going for a totally original
restoration except for new power and bottom, Thomas said, noting the boat
probably won’t garner any first-place concourse awards because of the
bottom: “You shouldn’t get a first place, in my opinion, in a boat with
repower and a modern new bottom. Every year the judgings get tougher and
tougher, but we should be able to get a second out of it.”
This Chris-Craft’s new
bottom will consist of two layers of 3/8” marine plywood covered by two
layers of 10-oz glass cloth and System Three Resin epoxy—essentially the
same method Thomas has used without complaint for 19 years. “In the
judgings we lose a point or two on non original bottoms, but for the
lasting health of the boats they make sense to a lot of folks over the old
white-lead-and-canvas between double-planking that was original in many of
these old boats.”
Some repairers and
restorers sheathe old planked boat bottoms with fiberglass—something a bit
foreign, even alarming, to knowledgeable owners of carvel-planked hulls.
For some classic motorboat people, ‘glassing is acceptable when the bottom
doesn’t need complete replacement. “Most of the time, if it isn’t too
bad, you can clean the bottom off, wood it, put in a new plank or two
maybe, refasten it, fair it, and cover it with ‘glass and epoxy (not
polyester), and it will last a long, long time,” Thomas said.
Following Lake Tahoe boat
restorer Dick Clark’s practice, Thomas often wets a bottom he’s about to
cover to bring it up to somewhat the same moisture content it will have
when the boat’s been left in the water. “We do it mostly by feel,” he
said. “We’ve found if we take old wet sleeping bags and lay them over the
[upside-down] bottom and cover them with an old plastic tarp, in about
three days the planks swell up to just like they would be if the boat was
in the water. The only time delamination was a problem was once in an
area about the width of a plank and 4’ long that still had too much oil in
it from a leaking engine. Acetone didn’t wick the oil out of it; I should
have pulled that plank out.”
For new bottoms, Thomas
generally sticks with epoxy because he’s generally using ‘glass or plywood
and ‘glass—plus Kevlar for especially tough duty: “Plywood doesn’t need to
breathe like solid planking; the wood isn’t going to move a lot. For
building a more traditional double-planked bottom with thicker planks,
3M’s 5200 or Sikaflex is good where you need to allow for more expansion
and contraction of the wood, fiberglass, and epoxy route. I’ll do it as
the customer wants,” he said, “but personally, I wouldn’t want my bottom
moving around.
Other than the modern
bottoms, Thomas said his shop is known “for its dedication to
originality,” which is borne out by all those concourse wins where the
judging standards keep getting higher. “Everything has to be so
accurate—the exact number of pleats in the seats, the hardware correct,
and the placement just right,” all of which is just fine with
Thomas-the-perfectionist. “I really enjoy my work. If I were to retire
tomorrow, I’d do it as a hobby.”
As you might guess,
Thomas also has his own ideas on varnishing: “A lot of people would put 12
coats of varnish on the first year. We go seven or eight the first year
and then a ‘final’ five or six coats after a season, because within a year
the 12 coats will shrink down and the grain will show anyway, even through
all those coats, and you have to build it up again.” After much trial and
error, Thomas said he simply uses Z_Spar Captain’s oil-based varnish.
Other Thomas projects
have included restoring a 1956 Old Town sailing canoe (it was headed to
the Tahoe judging this year), and custom building the interior on a 40’
steel-hulled cruising sailboat. He also builds and sells a line of
fiberglass touring kayaks. He’s even designed and built wooden
strip-planked marathon racing canoes. His 15’6” racing model weighs 33
lbs, and an 18’6” version is just 44 lbs. Thomas raced these boats
himself and with a woman friend, winning state and regional championships
and a spot on an Olympic paddling team in the ‘80’s, which he turned
down. “I didn’t want to go down to the Florida Everglades and camp out
and practice all winter, which I’d have to do if I was to be at all
competitive, I’d have had to close my business, so I said “No, I don’t
think so.’”
An Extra Project
Thomas anticipates building a Marisol
12’6” sailing skiff designed by Gifford Jackson of New Zealand, who
describes it as, among other things, simple enough for the beginner and “a
challenge for the professional” who wants to make it a bit fancy—which is
right down Thomas’s alley. He’s also crafting the interior for a custom,
high-zoot aluminum sport fisherman—perhaps partly to remind him of his
roots, of when he built aluminum RV’s.
Jigs for
Rolling Hulls
Rotation Eases the Job
Early in his restoration career,
Steven Thomas realized he needed an efficient way to roll the boats he was
working on for easy access to bottoms and topsides. He first came up with
a set of roll hoops to handle boats with up to 6’ of beam. Later, he
created a second set for larger boats. He devised the first set to roll
the boats in-place, as if on a spit—a necessity when he was in a narrower
shop and there wasn’t room to barrel-roll a boat across the floor. Later,
in his current, larger shop, he devised the second, C-shaped roll-over jig
for boats with up to 8’ of beam.
Thomas figures he has
“maybe $100” in the first simple jig and perhaps #300 in the larger, later
setup—but then, welding is among his talents. Thomas’s only out-of-pocket
labor expense was his helper’s salary and getting the steel yard to roll
the square-section tubing to shape.
For the first hoop-style
jig, he used three 2”x2” mild steel square-tubing sections 20’long, each
bent to a circular shape of about 61/2’ diameter. These hoops were
connected to each other with two longitudinal stringers of 1”x1” tubing
20’ long. Supports of the same material held the boat within the hoops.
When everything is fitted up, welded in place, and temporarily secured to
the boat, there’s no place for the hull to shift inside the steel
framework.
Picture right: Held
in the jig, and rolled on its side, the hull is readily accessible for
almost any work.
Under the hoops on the
shop floor, are three sets of trunnion rollers made from 24” lengths of
1”x4” channel iron, each containing a set of rollers upon which the hoops
turn. The rollers are crude—just short pieces (4”-long) of3/4” rod stock
with a 3”-long piece of 1” I.D. pipe slipped over the rod. The ends of
the rod are then welded to the flange of the channel; the stubby section
of pipe hangs down into the void between the channel flanges and
self-aligns. Each of the channels has a pair of these rod-and-pipe
bearings, which are spaced apart just enough for the bottom of the hoop
that rests on them to clear the bottom of the hoop that rests on them to
clear the bottom of the channel by about ½”.
“The pipe is loose around
the little rod sections, and we don’t grease them, so it’s not too easy to
roll, and it doesn’t roll smoothly,” Thomas said. “That way, it’s easier
to block and keep in position. The U-channel pieces are not fastened to
the floor; gravity is enough to keep them in position. “There’s only a
few hours labor in these,” Thomas said. “We welded them ourselves and
there’s really nothing to them. Anybody in the boat building business can
make them.”
Picture above: A fay & Bowen launch rests in Thomas's
first roll-over jig. Formed from 2" x 2" mild-steel square tubing,
the 6 1/2' - diameter hoops roll on crude bearings secured to lengths of
U-shaped channel on the concrete floor. The boat rotates as if on a
spit.
The larger C-shaped jig
is built of the same materials, also with struts and pads cut, placed, and
welded on the spot for each boat. With a set of three C-shaped partial
hoops, which roll across the floor rather than on bearings like the early
hoop-shaped jig, a complete restoration of a 34’ Vonderworth (built in
Astoria, Oregon, in 1927) was made relatively easy—at least rolling it to
a comfortable working position was a cinch.
Above the sheer, on the
ends of the “C.” Thomas welds 55-gallon steel drums that help make
turning the boat and positioning it at any angle a simple task: The drums
on what will be the lower side of the boat are filled with water until the
rig rolls the boat to the desired angle. Later, they’re pumped out when
it’s time to bring the boat back up to level.
“It rolls so easily, you
can pull the boat over with one finger,” Thomas said. “Soon after we built
that thing and we had the big commuter in it, we had the Rotary Club here;
and I all of a sudden rolled it over about 30°
by hand. You should have seen those people scatter! They thought the
damned thing was coming at them. You can also let go and it’ll rock back
and forth for about 20 minutes, just as if it were at sea.”
Picture above
right: Thomas's C-shaped rolling jig can handle larger boats, but it
requires more shop space as the assembly is barrel-rolled across the
floor. Before the boat is rolled, the 55 -gallon drums on what will
become the lower side are partially filled with water to act as
counterweights. The jig then can be rolled with one hand.
Picture below:
Secure in the C-shaped rolling jig, a 1928 Vonderworth commuter undergoes
restoration.
What about the little areas on the bottom where support pads are screwed
into the boat’s keel? How do you get to them? Thomas said that’s no
problem, “you comeback later to finish that off when the boat’s out of the
rollers.” For boats that are to get entirely new bottoms, the pads are
usually screwed only into the keels so as not to interfere with replanking.
“If we had to replace a keel, we’d probably turn the boat right-side up
before we put it into the jig,” Thomas said. “But to tell you the truth,
I’ve never had to replace a keel for a boat we’ve put in the jig.”
With Thomas’s C-section rollers, 12”
of clear shop width is needed to barrel-roll a boat to nearly 90°
--a little more than twice the beam of the boat. When not needed, both
rolling jigs can be broken down. The pieces consume little room when
stacked against a wall.
“With a boat in this jig,
you can take a pry-bar and move the boat anywhere in the shop.
There’s only 2”x 2” of steel in three places touching the [concrete]
floor,” Thomas noted, “so there’s not much resistance.”
How about making up a
similar jig with adjustable struts and pads, perhaps using jack stand
parts, to make a single rolling jig fit several boats so refitting and
re-welding are not required? Thomas didn’t think that would be strong and
safe enough. “It sounds slippery,” he said. “You want everything
solid—besides, it doesn’t take much time to cut and weld the things
together for each boat.” -- BT
Picture above :
Rolling the jig across the shop floor puts all of the work easily to hand.
Thomas
Fabrication & Boatworks