a table. I have a few portholes around here and some really nice deck hatches. Sounds like a great way to make them useful instead of stuff in my fathers old antique bus. He collected a lot of old marine stuff over the years. I guess its worth more in just the brass or bronze then what it cost new. Have a few bells also but they were from old wooden boats that got dumped on us at the marina as other boat yards refused to haul them as they new they would be left there. Here its a real problem in cutting them up or burning them as most were documented vessels and the coast guard regs make it hard to destroy it without a lot of paper work and time. Any money we got from it came from the brass, bronze, stainless if any and other usable items on board. Later we stopped taking them also. Many got ran up on rock island, a small rock island at the mouth of the Thames River. I'm not sure who, but during the year, some group came and set them on fire. It was a favorite place for many boaters to go and get parts or just add to their nautical collections. For a long time on our dock I had a really nice swordfish pulpit attached. Everyone that came there I think took their picture on it looking out over the water with a harpoon in their hand. Finally a guy in a nice Egg Harbor came in one evening in the dark for fuel. They had all been out to Block Island winterizing there system to much and ran into it and broke if off the dock and broke it in half. I still have a bunch of doors off the nets of our 2 draggers we had for bait fish and the restaurant. The nets are all shot now, but the doors still look good. Keels are still good on them also. That was fun. Kind of like going metal detecting in the water only you got more stuff. In this area with all the lobster people, you were always swallowing a lobster pot or two. It sure made it hard to pull
On the crabs...Did anyone ever find any of them at the bottom in 10,000 feet of water? I'm wondering what depth they get those big snow crabs from up there in the Bering strait?. Sure are good eating.
Oh yeah. One more question. I seldom hear people talk about the Lost Wax process. I worked in a foundry for 4 years that did the lost wax process. Over the years I worked in most of the operations there. From the pouring ladle, to cutting off all the feeds to the item you were castings, to heat treating, straighting, X Ray, Zyglo, heliarcing them, you name it, I made to the department. But, my most fun there was making bluefish jigs out of stainless. We would make them up in our spare time with our wax die and run off enough of them for the entire plant. When a batch of stainless came due, there were a lot of extra crucibles to let cool and break open. Most of our stuff we cast for for Pratt Jet engines, or Siskorsky Choppers and Ruger Arms. Teeth for garbage grinders. I remember those as I would do the heat treating of them and they had to be brough to a Rockwell of 90..... We made a few anchors up, only the small 10 lb ones for small boats that could use the mushroom anchors. The big ones with all the feeds were just to heavy and would not work in our crucibles. Just to big.... The company then was call Arwood Castings but has since been bought up by someone else. Their precision department was really awesome. They did some really nice work and the girls on the wax process setting them up were good. OK, enough of this, my mind started to wandering.
Good story and pictures.
George-CT
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