Bob Cleek

I guess this proves there is a lot of way to skin this cat! There is, however, a product made for the purpose that works wonderfully. It's called "Interlux Surfacing Putty" (the old timers also call it "glazing compound") and can be purchased for around $20 a pint at any marine chandlery. (Other paint companies make it as well, I'm sure.) It is intended for filling dents and dings (but not huge divots) when fairing boat topsides which are to be finished with gloss topcoat. It is about the thickness of "thin peanut butter" and can be further thinned with acetone. As it is acetone-thinned, it dries very quickly. It will dry and skin over in the can if the can is left open long. This can be cured if it happens by adding a small amount of acetone to the can, storing the can upside down overnight, and then stirring well to reconstitute the original thickness. This stuff sands like a hot knife going through butter and will quickly fair in any defects. I wouldn't be too quick to use Bondo, which is fine for metal, but is hygroscopic and can let go sometimes when used on wood. Elmer's and filler has the drawback that Elmer's doesn't sand very well and will gum up paper quickly. Epoxy and micro-balloons works well enough, but is messy and you have to fiddle with the epoxy mixing. One huge advantage of Surfacing Putty's ease of sanding is that you don't run the risk of sanding low spots into your surface while trying to fair the spot you've put it on.

No question, if you are having problems with brush strokes, your paint is too thick. Experiment with your non-oil based paints to see what solvent will work best. I've had good results with denatured alcohol for acrylics. Multiple thin coats are better than fewer thick coats. The old "Dio-sol" thinned Floquil paints were wonderful, in that they had a high, and very fine, pigment content and so could be thinned while still retaining much of their "covering" ability. The water based crap the eco-regulators have imposed upon us (drying paint fumes harm the environment, don't ya know) is nothing near the quality of the "good stuff." Thin paint application and multiple coats is the answer. If the paint is thin enough and will "level" on its own, it shouldn't matter much what kind of brush you use, really, so long as you remember: "synthetic bristles for water-based paint and natural bristles for oil-based paint."

"Yellow metal" guns were made of what came to be called "naval brass," which is actually a bronze. (Copper and tin.) Never brass. (Copper and zinc.) Bronze oxidizes to a dark brown color and needs no further maintenance. While bronze can be polished, it is quite a job and given the good looks of "natural bronze" in the marine environment, it's hard to believe any captain would paint a bronze cannon. Iron cannon might be painted black (or "blacked" with lampblack and oil,) but as bronze cannon were prized as "finestkind," I doubt anyone would ever want to conceal that fact by painting it black. At small scale, however, (or at a distance,) cannon would appear black in any event.

Try going to your local pet store. They all sell bovine large bones in a variety of sizes. You can get "knuckles" or long bones, thoroughly sterilized and shrink wrapped. They usually vary a bit in size. You can pick your favorite shapes as needed and they are inexpensive. They come in "regular" and "smoked." The smoked are brown colored. Get the plain regular white ones. (Your dog will love the smoked ones, but you don't want Rover chewing up your model!) Similarly avoid those that may have peanut butter or other tasty stuff stuffed inside of them.

Sold for $560 high bid.

Google "foot operated treadle scroll saw" or "treadle jig saw." You'll find more than you ever wanted to know about converting old treadle sewing machine bases to scroll saws. You may find some time saving answers there.

The one rigging tool I find indispensable is the ear polypus forceps. (Google it to see what they look like.) Nothing can reach inside the shrouds and grab a line better..

Just hearsay here, but I've heard nothing but good things about them over the years. Little Machine Shop seems to be oriented towards serious machinists, which is a good thing. They have a wide range of machines and tooling. It's a demanding market. If an outfit isn't pretty good, they aren't going to be in business long and TMS has been around for a while now. As for buying Sherline, or any "micro" machines, I'd offer the observation that it's really important to get as much information up front as possible. (Which you are doing here.) I'd suggest you check out the "home shop machinist" type forums and ask your questions there. Those guys have a huge amount of knowledge to share when it comes to machine tools. While I won't call myself a machinist by any stretch of the imagination, the advice I got was to get the biggest machine I could fit in my shop (and afford) and to get good used "old Amurricun 'arn" which is a lot less expensive than questionable new Chinese stuff. I scored a late-model Craftsman/Atlas 12" X 42" with all the tooling anybody could hope for thanks to Craigslist and I've been very happy with it. (The tooling it came with is probably worth three or four times what the lathe itself is worth.) I paid probably a third of what a basic Sherline or Taig set up would run. The Atlas isn't the top choice for doing serious production machining because it is somewhat light weight for a 12X lathe, but it's entirely serviceable if you don't get impatient and try taking 1/4" cuts! It does anything I need for modeling, as well as general shop use and properly set up is as accurate as I will ever be able to need.. The big advantage is that the tooling is standard and readily available. There's plenty for sale used as well, which means big savings. Figure to spend at least as much on even basic tooling as you do on the machine itself. That's where the problems I've heard of arise with the Sherline and Taig type of machinery. Sherline's tooling, at least when I checked it out, was pretty much all proprietary. In other words, if you want a widget, you will have to by a Sherline widget because none of the standard widgets will fit on your Sherline machine. That makes the Sherline hugely more expensive. Somebody may want the Sherline and that makes the expensive justifiable for them, of course. I'm not saying Sherline makes a poor machine, one way or the other, but If you buy a machine that is based on standard tooling, i.e. standard Morse tapers, standard T-nuts and so on, you will probably be a lot happier and a lot richer. The thing to remember about machine tools is that an accurate big machine will do small work, but a small machine can't do big work and the small machines don't cost all that much less, either.

Yep, sounds like what we call "contact cement" here in the US.

I hear you! I've encountered the same problem. The fact is, most of the "tools," using the term loosely, that are offered by "modeling" mail order houses are bottom-of-the-line junk. (Yes, that means you, Model Expo and Micro-Mark!) I can't blame them that much, though, because good tools are always expensive to buy, but cheaper in the long run. Tool buyers are often new to a craft and hesitant to lay out the big bucks, so the retailers offer what sells... and often at rather high prices when all is said and done. If I were in the market for a jeweler's saw, I'd go to any of the big commercial jeweler's supply houses. In fact, that's where I go for any miniature tools these days. I've found Otto Frei to have a particularly nice selection. Here's their saw page: http://www.ottofrei.com/Store/Saw-blades-and-Saw-Frames/ Rules for buying tools: 1) Never buy a tool unless you really need it. 2) If you are going to use the tool more than once, buy the best one you can possibly afford. It will hold its value, be a joy to own, and improve your craftsmanship because you won't be able to blame your shortcomings on your tools! Buying the best is always the most economical way to go, unless you know a cheapo throw-away tool will serve the purpose in the short haul. And, if you amass a nice collection of really good tools, they will hold their value and perhaps make your widow's cleaning out your shop worth her while!

Try this one for limited production runs. Perhaps it will work. (It will depend on the metal you want to cut the disks out of.) Take a piece of tubing made of metal harder than the metal you want to cut your disk out of. (Or, at least, anneal the disk material, which you should probably do in any event.) The tubing should have an inside diameter the same as the size of the disk you want. Cut the tubing square across (or grind the end flat.) Then grind the edge of the tubing at about 60 degrees, forming a sharp edge at the end of the tubing, which will be a circle the same size as the inside diameter, and hence the same size as the disk you want. Put the tubing in your drill press. (Put it far enough in the chuck that it will not "whip" or flex.) Put your disk material on a block of wood. Drill the disk material with the tubing "hollow point drill" you have made. Apply pressure slowly and evenly, but not so much that you deflect the disk sheet material. (Rig an effective method of holding the disk material sheet.) Use lubricating oil (WD-40 should be fine.) You should be able to cut a disk the same diameter of the inside of the tube every time. Keeping the cutting edge of the tube at right angles to the disk material goes a long way towards ensuring success. When you've got enough disks, remove the tube and poke the stack of disks out of the "hollow point drill" tube. I've done this frequently with a variety of materials, but can't ensure it will work with the material you are using. The keys are having a harder "drill" than the material you are cutting and patience.

Yes, dust vacuums do have their place and if you are extensively using power tools they become something of a necessity unless you can work outdoors or have fans that will circulate the air, and thus the micro-dust, out of your shop. That said, the problem of dust is hugely reduced in direct proportion to the reduction in power tool use. A sander is not really a shaper, but most use them for this purpose. On the other hand, for example, a plane takes a shaving that doesn't add a bit of dust to the air. A knife or a chisel doesn't add dust to the air, either. On the other hand, a router, table saw, wood lathe and so on make a real mess! It's a bit of a trade off, I suppose.

Yep, silicone sprays are death to fine finishes in the shop environment. The silicone "dust" gets into the air and settles on things. Then it transfers to the finish surfaces and coatings (particularly varnish) will form "fisheyes" wherever they come in contact with the slightest bit of silicone. (It seems to affect the surface tension of the coating material.) Just don't go there!

Not to hurt feelings here, but... Those of us "of a certain age" can remember the time when every boy's education in how to hone and dress a fine edge on a cutting tool began around age seven or eight when he was given his first pocket knife, an item of personal kit every male carried in his pocket for the rest of his life. Sadly, with all the metal detectors around, few men carry pocket knives anymore and few mother's would tolerate their seven year old son having a pocket knife of his own. (I suppose they are strictly forbidden on the grounds of any grammar school these days. Parents today seem ignorant of the fact that what "can put your eye out!" is really the most fun when you're a kid.) Consequently, outfits like the good folks at Lee Valley have made quite a business of selling all sorts of slick gizmos that promise to ensure success in an endeavor which, up to maybe fifty years ago, most kids had mastered by age ten or twelve. Strange how one generation can master operating a personal computer without a second thought, but can't sharpen an edged tool without all sorts of guides and machines and so on. Honing guides are like training wheels on a bicycle. They ensure greater success on a first effort by the inexperienced, but encourage dependence. I'd encourage folks to take off the "training wheels" and learn to sharpen "freehand." It is an easily acquired skill, regardless of whether you rely on an Arkansas stone, a Japanese waterstone, a "diamond" stone, or even a piece of emery or aluminum oxide paper taped to the (flat) top of a table saw or whatever and giving it a few licks on a strop or steel. There's lots of instructional videos on YouTube for those who don't have grandfathers to show them how to sharpen an edge and fettle and adjust a plane, spokeshave, or whatever. (The trick is "feeling" for when the bevel is flat on the abrasive surface and keeping it there.) This was the second thing any apprentice learned, after how to sweep the floor. You can spend lots of money on electric shop vacuum systems, honing guides and machines and the like, or serve an "apprenticeship" learning the basics instead of buying tools sold to make people believe they will make them better craftsmen. Unfortunately, the woodworking hobby seems to be going the way of golf, where slick marketers are always trying to sell you a club that's going to improve your game. Don't let them play you for a sucker! (Okay, rant over!)

It sure looks like it would be relatively easy to find a straight knife blade that would serve as well, or grind the teeth off of an old piece of saw and sharpen that. Myself, I've found a standard "paper cutter" to work quite well for cutting straight edges from veneer sheet and the like.

It's obviously a poor second to the Horror Fright "Mini Mite table saw" alternative. (Sorry, this site won't permit pasting the URL... go to "Harbor Freight" on-line catalog and use their search box.) I have one of those and it's pretty much gutless for sawing and offers poor accuracy unless you want to start modifying it. It lists for $37, but with the usual Harbor Freight discount coupons and all, can probably be had for $29. Comes with regular and a diamond edged blades about 4" or so. I bought it on a whim to play with. I ultimately cut a flat disk to mount on the arbor and glued sandpaper to it. It makes a serviceable disk sander, but I wouldn't advise expecting much from it as a table saw.

I've previously encountered overheating problems with battery powered Dremel tools. Not related to this recall, but my wife used a rechargeable Dremel with a sanding drum to manicure her show dogs' toe nails. (It's a common practice in that endeavor. ... sheesh! Don't get me started!) This required continuous running under load for five minutes or more and the battery contacts would heat up and melt. Obviously, this wasn't one of the "1001 Things You Can Do with Your Dremel Tool." After exchanging a few burned up batteries, she "confiscated" by corded Dremel. I still have the battery one, but rarely, if ever, use it. When she took my corded Dremel, it gave me an excuse to buy a Foredom system. As most probably know, there's just no comparison between the Dremel and the Foredom. While the Foredom is more expensive, of course, it will probably outlast a half-dozen Dremels.

A preventer on a larger vessel is as described and pictured above. In that application, there are far larger forces involved, and, as illustrated, many such applications on larger vessels are connected to the middle of the boom where they apply a stronger pull downward and also serve as vangs. That hasn't been my experience with the far smaller sailing craft. But, as they say, "different ships, different ropes."

Both blocks contain hooks. It certainly could be used as a gybe preventer, but that ignores the fact that there are reef clew line turning blocks on the aft end of the boom, yet no other cleat upon which to belay them. There is an eye at the end of the boom to which the main clew could be fastened, which would permit the tackle to be used as both a preventer (when the main was fully set) or a reef clew tackle when sail was shortened. My money remains on it being a clew reefing tackle, though. Preventers are generally single part lines without any blocks for purchase. They are not set up to haul under tension, but rather just tied off once the main boom is run out on a run and cast off before hardening up or commencing a controlled gybe. They aren't intended to apply any forward tension to the boom, but rather to simply prevent the boom from swinging aft. Also, any rigger worth his salt wouldn't use a full length tackle as pictured even if he wanted purchase on a gybe preventer. It would be a waste of line. He'd run a pendant from the end of the boom and then clap on a short tackle (a "handy billy") only long enough to provide the purchase. There'd be no point to using up all that line running through the blocks to the extreme ends of the attachment points. Capice? Gybe preventers are not to be confused with boom downhauls rigged on modern jib-headed mainsails, which are intended to pull down on the boom to flatten the main on a reach or run and so do require purchase.

I saw a "waxing" sign in the window of a beauty parlor the other day and asked them if they did ship model rigging and all I got was a blank stare. You should wax because: It eliminates the "fuzz" so your rigging will appear true to scale. It tends to seal the thread and prevent its holding moisture ambient in the air. It makes the thread stiffer, which can be a help in forming catenaries when portraying slack lines. It can make threading the thread through holes easier as it makes the thread stiffer, although dipping the end of a thread in CA glue these days will turn the end of a thread into its own "needle" and is easily clipped off when the threading is done. Beeswax will eventually dry to a hard surface which won't hold dust, but if you don't put your model in a case, it probably isn't going to last long enough for dust to be a problem. I simply draw the thread over a block of pure beeswax several passes and then between my thumb and forefinger to remove any excess and even out the application. Always has worked for me.

A "clump block" is "a large single block with a wide swallow used for a variety of daily purposes on board ships. They are made with a thicker case than the usual run of blocks carried in a ship so as to provide added strength to the purchases in which they are used." [The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea (Oxford University Press 1976, Ed. Peter Kemp)] Clump block: " Small, short, and thick working block with a solid rounded shell and wide, squat sheaves and swallows. it takes a rope half its own circumference in thickness." [Maritime Dictionary (Rene de Kerchove, Van Nordstrand Reinhold Co. 1961)] I've always heard the same block as described above called a "thump block" or "tump block." They are used as sheet turning blocks fastened to decks and rails and so mounted so the pulling force is upward, rather than downward as with many rigging blocks aloft. When the strain is off them, then, as when serving as a sheet block and tacking, they fall down onto the deck or whatever and go "clump," "thump," or if on a New England accented vessel, "tump." Hence their name. As they get banged around a lot and light weight isn't much of a consideration, unlike blocks hung aloft, they are heavily built. A Turk's head laid flat to form a woven pad is often placed around the eyes to which "thump blocks" are fastened to cushion the impact when they "collapse" when tension is off them. These are called "thump pads" or, I suppose "clump pads."

At the end of the day, I prefer to leave the mast slightly loose and adjust its rake and centering by "eyeball" it, and adjusting it with the standing rigging, the same as is done in full-sized construction. (I bring a lot of my full-sized wooden boat building experience to my modeling work.) A plumb line from the ceiling or wherever provides a handy reference if need be. I prefer also to adjust the masts with wooden wedges in a hole slightly larger than the mast diameter, as in full size practice, but not rigidly so, unless I am lucky enough with a solid block hull to be able to set it up in my drill press and drill a dead-accurate hole. The wedges allow for "fine tuning" with the tap of a small jeweler's hammer on one side or the other and permit further adjustments which may be required as the standing rigging is set up (and if I can still get to them inside the shrouds at that point!) I like to ultimately set up the rake and athwartships alignment of masts conservatively adjusting the tension on the standing rigging with as little tension as is necessary, again as in full sized practice. (When a sailing vessel is underway, the leeward rigging always goes slack while the windward rigging hardens up and so the masts are never exactly plumb in real life except when standing still anyway.) The point of watching the tension on the standing rigging is that the forces generated by the rigging are cumulative as the various elements are added and at the end one can have considerable forces locked into the whole structure. A loosely stepped mast gives you some room to move. Short of an hermetically sealed case, wood always moves with the ambient humidity, to one degree or another, no matter how stable one thinks its environment might be. Structural damage to full size vessels due to overly tight standing rigging is quite common. (Think "bow and arrow" forces where the mast is the arrow, the standing rigging the bowstring and the mast heel is concentrating all that force to one isolated point on the keel causing the adjacent garboard seams to open up or "pant" in heavy weather.) With models, the same principle can result in snapped spars, pulled out eyes and other rigging attachments, chainplates pulled out, and so on, as both the wood and the cordage shrinks and swells. Stretched, saggy rigging is often found in old models (of ships and people!) They weren't built that way. The cordage just stretched over time. Modern synthetic cordage holds up much better with less stretch, but again as with the full sized vessels, the trade-off for longer lasting low-stretch synthetic cordage is that the forces are transferred more efficiently to the model's structure and afford less elasticity as the wood may expand. If I asked for a show of hands of all those who have had the experience of an inexplicably broken bit of rigging on a cased model or upon tightening that last bit of standing rigging on their model, hearing something somewhere go "snap!"... but I won't.

Double ditto! If you must, a very fine and light pencil line is a better representation in scales smaller than what permits actual stitching.

To put a finer point on it, it is the clew pendant tackle. Aft block of the tackle is hooked on the eye as illustrated when the mainsail is not bent to the spar or furled and lashed to the boom. The fall of the tackle is secured to the cleat on the boom, as illustrated. In a model without the sail raised, The after block would be hooked to the eye on the boom, pulled up tight and the fall secured to the cleat on the boom. Neatly done, the remaining fall would be coiled, frapped and hung on the cleat on the boom. In use, the mainsail clew and each reefing clew would have a clew pendant running either from the main clew and each reef clew. Depending on the size of the vessel, the pendents would run from either the boom at the turning block, often tied around the boom with the turning block providing a "stop" to prevent the end from being pulled aft when set, or the end simply secured directly to the clews (with an eye splice, or just a knot.) Secured to the boom and run up to the clews and then back down to the turning blocks provides a further purchase, unlike a direct connection to the clews. The pendents would then be run down from the clews to their respective turning blocks and through the turning blocks. Depending on the size of the vessel, the turning blocks may have sheaves or simply be fairleads. You've referred to the turning blocks as "bees," which is perhaps not the accurate term. (A "bee's seat" or "bees" are longer rails generally fastened on either side of a bowsprit or jib boom to which bowsprit netting is tied.) The plan illustration does not provide the detail to show the sheaves, but the shape of the turning blocks leaves no doubt that they contain sheaves. If they did not contain sheaves and thus were fairleads, they would be shorter and simply consist of a block of wood with a round hole with the edges relieved drilled into them. Beyond the turning blocks, an eye is worked into each clew pendant so that when the sail is raised fully each eye hangs free (without tension) just below the turning block or fairlead. When the sail is set, full or reefed, the clew pendant tackle is hooked to the eye of the respective clew intended to be pulled taunt and hauled up tight (or loosened if more belly is desired to the set of the sail) and tied off to the cleat at the forward end of the boom with the tackle fall coiled and secured to the tackle cleat.

Bob, I'm most impressed with your Hoga/City of Oakland. You did very well under the constraints imposed by the lack of informational resources. Just a brief historical correction: Hoga is the only Navy hull still afloat of any kind which saw combat at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. (The USCG's cutter Roger B. Taney was also present and saw combat that day, she being the only other such US vessel in existence and now an historical memorial.) To my regret, I came across your build log a day late and a dollar short. In 1995, I wrote the original application to the Navy's ship donation program for Hoga's donation as an historical memorial. I had access to technical assistance from the Navy's Sea Systems Command and the Oakland Fire Department crew that had just then returned her to the Navy. Let me assure you that at that time she was hardly a hulk. She had just recently enjoyed a motor rebuild with new platinum contacts and a major servicing of one of her two ALCO diesels and was "good to go." (The supplemental hose manifolds and fire fighting equipment mounted for service as a fireboat were in large measure powered by a couple of large diesel generators and pumps mounted on the after deck and not present in her service configuration.) As politics sometimes have it, Oakland's city council was sold a bill of goods by a vendor in the form of a smaller jet propelled shallow draft fireboat and so, over the objections of the fire department crew, Hoga was declared no longer needed. I would expect that you would have been able to secure line drawings from NAVSEASYS or the Navy Historical Department at the Washington Navy Yard, which I believe retain copies of everything the Navy has ever owned, but that's water under the bridge now. She was at that time surveyed in detail by Tri-Coastal Marine in Berkeley, CA, a well-known vessel surveying firm and I also had their reports. The application I wrote for a local yacht club and for the purpose of securing Hoga for restoration to her 12-7-41 configuration for use as an operating tug serving the Liberty Ship Memorial vessel, Jeremiah O'Brien, in San Francisco. The application had wide-spread support in all the right places, but ran onto the rocks when, at a certain level, a Navy bureaucrat refused to waive the usual requirement that memorial vessels be essentially "gutted" and rendered entirely non-operational, which, of course was a ridiculous proposition in this instance. She'd been meticulously maintained by the OFD since Oakland had obtained her on a post-war surplus dollar-a-year lease right after WWII. That was "game over" for our proposal. We had no interest in rendering Hoga non-operational. We wanted to see her sailing. (The legalities of all this are fascinating, if one has an interest in them. The Jeremiah O'Brien is fully operational because as a Merchant Marine vessel, she was obtained from the Maritime Administration's ("MARAD") "mothball fleet," not from the Navy. The carrier Hornet now on display in Alameda, CA, was preserved only at the last minute because a group was able to buy it from the winner of the auction when she was sold as scrap. The Navy wouldn't sell or donate her for memorial purposes, but insisted she be sold for scrap, although once sold, the scrapper could do whatever he wanted with her... go figure!) Actually, as it turned out, we turned over a rock at NAVSEASYS that nobody ever saw coming. Although it was originally thought that Oakland's "return" of the leased surplus vessel would make our obtaining it, also as surplus, an easy task, it was, supposedly to everyone in Washington's amazement, ascertained upon our application that Hoga had never been stricken from the Navy roll and had been carried on the Navy roll and funded as an active USN vessel in the Navy budget since the end of the war! While I wasn't a "fly on the wall," it seems there must have been a lot of fancy dancing and dust swept under the rug to correct that paperwork. Who knows what it cost for crew, fuel allotments, maintenance and the rest, year after year, and where did that money really go? Your tax dollars at work, no doubt! Pretty amazing that the Navy wouldn't have noticed they were "missing" a 100 foot tug for fifty plus years, no? Once the Navy got Hoga stricken from the rolls, they sent her up to the MARAD "mothball fleet" in Suisun Bay where MARAD preserved her, after a fashion, as they do with various surplus vessels such as Howard Hughes' Glomar Explorer. A group in Honolulu applied to take her as a memorial at Pearl Harbor, hoping to operate her in conjunction with the BB Missouri memorial. I heard that they were unable to justify the expense of shipping her out to Pearl from SF because the Navy had by then decided that she was a "treasure" which could not be risked on making the trip on her own bottom. The last I heard, she was supposedly donated to a group in Arkansas, IIRC, who wanted to display her in a local park up some river there, but they had run out of money and she was languishing again. The last time I was up at the "mothball fleet," which I guess was maybe a year ago, she was still there, covered in seagull poop. I have no idea what justification the Navy had for giving Hoga to a group in Arkansas which has not the remotest connection with the vessel's long and illustrious history. She spent her entire working life at Pearl Harbor, "for the duration" and then as the City of Oakland. One or the other... but Arkansas? Well, I guess at least the seagulls won't be using her for their head. And to provide a further ironic finish to the whole sad story, the Oakland Fire Department found upon taking delivery of their new jet propelled shallow draft fireboat, that when they cut loose with the monitors, the "recoil" from their flow of water pushed the lightweight shallow draft bucket all over the place, so much so as to pretty much render it useless. It might have been faster than City of Oakland getting to a fire, but it wasn't much help when it got there! The old City of Oakland was like a rock and indeed no lightweight. Last I heard, Oakland had sent their new fireboat back for modifications to try to cure the problem. At least that was the rumor.