Well here it is so far … the 11’3" step deck, with the staircase step deck design and nose channels … needs sanding, rail paint and gloss/polish yet. Used OfishL longboard fin box that you sand through after glassing over it. Excited about this.
Did you get to ride it before it broke in half on that stupid iceberg?
Where are the steps? (Wait for it…)
The poop deck, right?
Hey thanks, guys, you’re great–I’ll be here all week!
I thought the Edmund Fitzgerald broke up in heavy seas (or by a few giant waves) and sank and didn’t realize that there were icebergs in the Great Lakes. Did you choose it as your theme because you expect yours to also break up?
How exactly did you get the graphic on the board? Is it laminated in, or stuck on the surface? What sort of material is it?
I have a friend who does similar graphics and wondered if it’s the same thing.
Doug
EW, you clever, man. To wit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald’s christening and launch proved troublesome, and some believe that bad luck dogged the boat from the beginning. When Mrs. Fitzgerald went to christen the boat by breaking a champagne bottle over the bow, it took her three swings to break the bottle. Upon launching the vessel in the water, the boat was slightly damaged as she hit the dock, and finally, at the ceremony one of the onlookers suffered a heart attack.
Sea trials for the Fitzgerald began on September 13, 1958, and Northwestern handed the operation of the boat to the Columbia Transportation Division of the Oglebay Norton Corporation one week later. For the next 17 years Fitzgerald carried taconite from mines near Duluth, Minnesota to iron works in Detroit, Toledo and other ports. Prior to the events of November 9, 1975, she suffered five collisions, running aground in 1969, colliding with the S.S. Hochelaga in 1970 and then striking the wall of a lock later in the same year, hitting a lock’s wall again in 1973, and then again the following year. She also lost her bow anchor in the Detroit River in 1974.[2]
LOL
Cause and controversy
When Fitzgerald first vanished, it was widely believed the boat had snapped in half on the lake surface owing to storm action. Similar surface breakups in the past suggested bow and stern sections would be found miles apart on the lake floor. When underwater surveys revealed these sections were just yards from each other, it was concluded that Fitzgerald had instead broken only upon hitting the lake floor.
Fuggin great reference EW
It carried TACONITE! That means it always wanted a surfer for a captain.
Quote:
…snipped>…It carried TACONITE! That means it always wanted a surfer for a captain.
??
the story is she buckled – which doesn’t necessarily mean she split up – but she took on a lot of water and sunk like a block of steel – those lake freighters are long, even by today’s ocean-going standards – not sure about the cargo (above someone said taconite), but i’m pretty sure it was an ore ( or if taconite is an ore) – the GL’s i understand can getup some high seas – but the difference is the short-period / high amplitude waves - major stresses on a ship laden with a heavy ore cargo - and vessels are constrained from manuevering to reduce these stresses - sometimes you can’t hove to as you could in open seas.
Gordon Lightfoot’s song is a classic.
" With a load of iron ore - 26,000 tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early"
The graphic was very carefully printed on rice paper, fed through a wide format printer taped to roll stock. Then glassed onto the already glassed/hotcoated/sanded surfboard, with another layer of glass and clear epoxy on top.
Vacuum bagged too.
Yea I’m aware of the history of the ship … bad November gale caused it to wreck off Whitefish Pt. on Lake Superior. Nobody will ever know if it broke in half, then sank, or sank and broke on the bottom. A few different theories have been presented. Either way, sad story … they never should have left Superior that day. They were warned.
Soon similar weather will be upon us, as it is every fall, and I’ll be breaking out the big guns. I was at the beach today handing out some “break the grip of the RIP” brochures to beachgoers hoping to spread the word and prevent more deaths … we’ve had many already this year. This time of year, water is warm … and warm moist air from the Gulf combines with cold air from Canada over our region, producing dangerous storm systems with winds in excess of 60 kt at times. 2 people nearly drowned in Marquette last weekend but fortunately there were surfers in the water that bailed them out. Lucky them, I’ve been at that spot, nice point break but the rip really rips.
Whoever mentioned the short wave periods make a difference is right on, produces stronger currents too and makes it more hazardous for boaters and swimmers alike.
Anyway, I’ll post more when I get the rails painted etc. … STOKED
Billy
Got it! – Except it’s not pronounced tah-co-night, but rather tack-ca(short “o”)-night.
Quote:
the story is she buckled – which doesn’t necessarily mean she split up – but she took on a lot of water and sunk like a block of steel – those lake freighters are long, even by today’s ocean-going standards – not sure about the cargo (above someone said taconite), but i’m pretty sure it was an ore ( or if taconite is an ore) – the GL’s i understand can getup some high seas – but the difference is the short-period / high amplitude waves - major stresses on a ship laden with a heavy ore cargo - and vessels are constrained from manuevering to reduce these stresses - sometimes you can’t hove to as you could in open seas.
Gordon Lightfoot’s song is a classic.
Yes, by the time of the sinking, virtually all of the iron ore from the Iron Range of Minnesota was in the form of processed taconite.
Taconite is described in wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taconite
It has an interesting history, most of which is not revealed in the presentation at wikipedia (Note: the following (long read) is all from memory, so I don’t guarantee 100% accuracy).
Prior to WW II, the state of Minnesota taxed iron ore twice – once (annually) while it was in the ground, and then a second time when it was extracted. The iron-bearing formation was primarily in the form of taconite and distributed as a long, narrow band that was relatively close to the surface at its east end but sloped downward toward the west. The “Iron Range” was approximately 70 miles in length (east to west). Taconite still existed beyond that western boundary, but it became impractical to mine it because of the increasing depth of the deposit. Taconite is essentially iron ore tightly bonded to silica (sand). The original “high grade” ore that was mined existed as pockets of material within the band of taconite in which the silica (sand) and iron oxide had been separated through leaching by nature.
Mining this naturally “refined” iron ore was the primary source of jobs and income along the Iron Range. One of the mining towns in “the Range” is Hibbing. The first location of Hibbing turned out to be over a high grade deposit of ore. To gain access to this deposit, the original Hibbing (“North Hibbing”) was moved to a new location farther south (“South Hibbing”). While this was going on, an enterprising person started bus service between the two locations. This bus service ultimately grew to become Greyhound Bus Lines.
At approximately 12,000 population (~1950) Hibbing was not only the biggest town along the Iron Range, but also the home of Robert Zimmerman–better known as Bob Dylan. [Aside: for a couple of years, it turned out that I lived across the street from him. But he was one year behind me in school and I was young, and I can’t say that I remember him at all].
The mining industry created a lot of money for the towns along the Iron Range and for the State of Minnesota via taxes (Minnesota collected an annual “mineral tax” on the iron ore while it was in the ground, and then again when it was mined) and the jobs that the mining created. In about 1918 a large (multi-story) school, spread over several blocks, was built in Hibbing from this revenue. It encompassed all grades from kindergarten through junior college. It was not only large, and well built, but also wonderfully equipped (when I went to UC Berkeley, the freshman chem lab there wasn’t nearly as nice nor as fully equipped as the chem lab at Hibbing High School). When the school first opened, an article about it appeared on the front page of the New York Times under the heading: “The White Elephant in the Land of the Buffalo”.
Just before the start of WW II, it was estimated that at the then current rate of consumption of iron ore (plus the expected growth in consumption), the reserves of “high grade” (leached) ore would last about 50 years. During the war, much of those reserves ended up in the bottom of the world’s oceans, and following the war, the estimate was revised to about 8 years of reserves.
Clearly something had to be done. The mining companies (divisions of the major steel companies) were willing to gamble that they could commercially process taconite, but they could not afford to do so with the then existing taxing structure (i.e. taxing the ore in ground) that would occur if taconite were considered something of value. That problem was solved when the residents of the state voted in a constitutional amendment so that taconite would only be taxed when extracted from the ground.
The first major (i.e. non-experimental or prototype) taconite processing plant was built by Erie Mining Company/Bethlem Steel Corp on the east end of the range. At the time it was the largest privately financed structure built in the US (400 million) without government aid.
Numerous technical problems had to be solved. For example, taconite is both hard (it will scratch glass) yet tough (i.e. not brittle like a diamond). So hard and tough, in fact, that conventional diamond faced drills could not drill fast enough to be economically viable. The solution was to invent the “jet piercing” drill. That consisted of a rotating drill pipe with a manifold on the drilling end that produced four jet flames, positioned at 90 degrees rotation relative to each other, and burning a mixture of kerosene and liquid oxygen. In between each flame was a jet of water. As the drill rotated, the taconite was first heated by the flame, then cooled by the following stream of water. This caused chips of taconite to spall off (and be carried up the drill pipe by the steam being generated during the drilling). A linear series of such drill holes were then packed with explosive, triggered, and then the resulting rocks loaded into mine trains (or huge dump trucks) and transported to the processing plant.
The first processing step was to dump the rocks into the primary crushers (an upside down cone moving on an eccentric of about 1.5" placed in a somewhat larger upright cone). They would accept rocks up to 5’ in size and crush it down to rocks of a few inches. With the hardness and toughness of the taconite, the forces generated could be enormous and the whole building and crusher would “jump” like in sudden earthquake when the the cone got a good “bite” on a large rock.
Following the primary crusher was a set of secondary crushers (they weighed 200 tons each) that crushed the rock down to the size of gravel. That was followed by a set of rod mills, which in turn, fed into a larger set of ball mills. The length of the ball mill building (ball mill after ball mill placed next to each other) was about 1200 feet. By the end of this stage, the ore had been crushed and milled down to approximately the size of talcum power. That was fine enough so that the domains of silica/sand were separated from the domains of iron ore ( but both still mixed together). This powder like material was then passed through strong magnets to separate the magnetite (Fe3O4) from the sand.
The ore was then ready to be shipped down to Lake Superior (Silver Bay) and loaded aboard an ore carrier (like the Edmund Fitzgerald). Shipping to the lake was by rail using the heaviest guage track available. A typical train would consist of 5 of the largest diesel locomotives pulling 200 ore cars, each weighing about 100 tons when loaded. [Aside: there were no roads in the area between the plant and the harbor as it is largely muskeg swamp. The railroad right of way was built during the winter when the ground was frozen and the muskeg material dug out and replaced by quality fill]
However, the iron ore could not be shipped in this powdered form as it would generate huge clouds of iron ore dust when being transported by rail. Even worse, it would pack together in a blast furnace and it was impossible to flow air through it necessary to smelt the iron. The solution was to add some additives (primarily bentonite) and water and then roll the resulting damp ore into pellets (about 1/2 to 5/8" diameter). The pellets were then “roasted” at high temperature so they bonded back together. A considerable fraction of the heat for this process came from the oxidation of Fe3O4 to hematite (Fe2O3). The blast furnaces loved this material as the high porosity of the pellets allowed much more iron to be made in a blast furnace than the natural “high grade” iron ore. Hence the pellets commanded a premium price.
PS. Wikipedia only discusses magnetite taconite since hematite is not magnetic and hence couldn’t be separated from the silica by the magnets. However, there was at least one processing plant that was build to use the (more abundant) hematite. To accomplish this, the hematite was first converted to magnetite (by heating in a reducing atmosphere–but I don’t know the details).