For those of us who restore our own boats, the ACBS restoration clinic is one of the best events on our calendar. Where else can you see three professional restorers reveal their secrets on how they do a prize-winning restoration? This year the clinic was held at Tony Brown’s Western Runabouts’ new shop at Homewood. There we had a 16’ Chris Craft for hands on engine removal and a 28’ Gar Wood for sanding and varnishing.

In addition to Tony, Herb Hall gave his advice on boat mechanics and Curt Bauman demonstrated finishing techniques. This is the first time Curt has presented at our clinic and I hope he’ll be back again, so we can learn how to pronounce “Toluol”.

Twenty-eight people attended this year’s clinic. Bob Germany came the farthest, Houston, Texas. He’s restoring a 1952, 18’ Sportsman. Several came from Southern California as well. Russ Knox from Los Alamedas is working on a 1956 17’ Chris and Bob Newcomer from Santa Ana is doing a 1961, 19.5’ Capri. Apparently the word has gotten out. 

One of the best things about this clinic is that we get to try out the techniques we learn on the demo boats. It seems a little risky for the boats, but they survived OK. We did sanding, fairing, sanding, caulking, wet sanding, brush varnishing, dry sanding, roller varnishing and did I mention sanding. We also learned special techniques for fixing dings.

Sierra Boat Co's Herb Hall teaches about marine motors and Dave Lobb of Northwest Cassic Boats demonstrates how to replace a bottom.

Bottom off! Rich Fisher makes the first cut and then clean the ribs.

New inner bottom goes on.

The class tries to figure out what's wrong with this  boat.