Two shows and a little progress

A restoration like mine takes patience and perseverance. Progress has been glacial lately, but after last Sunday's work I sense a big leap forward. I think I have solved the problem of fabricating a patch for the rusted out rear windowsill.

Before I go into that I want to update a few things. Three weeks ago my wife and I attended a birthday party at the sandbar in Kaneohe Bay. The company was great, the food was great, but the sandbar was a disappointment. At low tide it was at most a hundred yards long and six feet wide. On the ocean side the shallow bottom continues out maybe a quarter mile. Interesting, but that's all. There is nothing to do that can't be done on shore, and no bathrooms or showers ... am I a wuss for wanting to be able to pee someplace else besides the water where dozens of people are swimming?

Not long after we had been out there some people reported a strange encounter with a school of sharks. I wouldn't go there expecting to have such an encounter, as it is very rare. You'd be more likely to be hit by a flying beer bottle.

I don't have pics of the sandbar because I did not want to chance getting my Nikon wet, but I do have pics of my Lotus at a couple of car shows. The first was British Car Day at Kapiolani Park, May 25, 2008. The second was a show called Build the Track Day, in support of building a race track on Oahu, held the Saturday of Fathers Day weekend at Aloha Tower Marketplace. You can see more pics, including a nice rolling slide show, at the group's web site. If you watch long enough you will see a a few shots of my Europa, and there is even a picture of me admiring a red open-wheel race car. Look for the guy in a black shirt and black Piloti shoes with red laces. The yellow Esprit and the blue Ford GT got a lot more attention, but at least I'm in there.

Now back to the task at hand. I began by finishing what I had started the last time, cutting the one long patch for the rear windowsill into four sections. After that came a lot of fiddling to see how to make them fit. I ended up doing what my friend Tom had suggested, making a series of cuts most of the way but not all of the way through. This will allow me to flex the piece upward near the ends. My plan is to get it welded in next time. In the last pic you can see the wire hook I made to pull the end up into place. Tom suggested I pre-bend the end pieces and weld the gaps closed rather than messing with it in place.