Bristol Channel Cutter Renderings

I’ve re-opened this blog to post three images of my Bristol Channel Cutter Godspeed. For the BCC Newsgroup members, here are the images I noted in my newsgroup post. Send me an email at mark@mgearhart.com if you’d like the Adobe Illustrator source files.

They are over 1MB each. Not really too big, but I can’t post them to the Newsgroup site, and the version of wordpress that I’m using does not allow posting of “.ai” files.

bcc1.ai:

bcc2.ai:

bcc3.ai:

Cranking up GKM Research

I’m cranking up the Gearhart Knitting Machine Company research. Its been inactive for the last couple years, mainly due to moving, jobs, raising a little kid, and so on. But, if I ever hope to tell the story of the family business back in late 1800’s through early 1900’s, I’d better make a start.

So, the first step is to open up a new blog to publish my findings as they happen. The new blog is at http://gearhartmachines.wordpress.com. This seems to be the easiest way to create the small articles and findings that I hope will someday become organized and expanded into the bigger story of the company. I’m using the free wordpress site instead of my home computer so that I can have some assurance that the site will always have access to the public.

Of course, the main reason for choosing a blog is so that I can solicit comments from the world. There are a lot of missing facts, and there are also many people out there who have odds and ends of paperwork which I’d like to view or at least know about. So, the best way to do this is to make a swap of information. Or so I think. Maybe if I publish some things, the favor will be returned. Well, we’ll see how it goes.

High Shipping Costs from Britain

Yeah, I finally did it. I won the right globe for the right price on ebay. I submitting the only bid, for £29. This translates to $43 US, which is a great buy for this globe, which normally retails for £209 ($313).

I did ask the seller ahead of time for a shipping estimate, which came out to be £65 more or less. A sanity check from the original manufacturer which was also in Britain was £50. So, $97 for shipping was twice the cost of the globe, but it would fit pretty nice into my library.

The big shock, for both me and the seller, was discovering that since the item was light, the postal carrier decided to charge by volume instead. This is only a 12-inch globe, but the final shipping quotes ranged from £108 ($162) to £229 ($343). Are you kidding? This is ridiculous. Needless to say, we cancelled the transaction and now I’m back to the drawing board. Shoot.

Oh yes, its a relief to know that I’m not subject to the 17.5% VAT tax. I’ve heard this before, but it really does seems to me also that everyone’s got their hand out these days, wanting something for nothing.

USS North Carolina

USS North Carolina

The USS North Carolina (BB-55) is on permanent display down in the port city of Wilmington NC. I made a stop there over the weekend, since Wilmington is only two and a half hour away from Raleigh, where I live.

I must say, this Battleship is in mint condition. There’s not a speck of rust anywhere, and the teak decks look practically new. Best of all, the interior is open all the way down to the engine room. Unlike the WWI dreadnaught USS Texas, I think it could be reasonable to see the USS North Carolina cast off without too much trouble at all.

This battleship is small compared to the Wisconson Class battleships. Constrained to 35,000 tons standard displacement by both the Washington Naval Treaty and the London Naval Treaty, to a beam of less than 110 feet by the locks of the Panama Canal, and to a 38-foot draft to enable the ship to use as many anchorages and navy yards as possible, she was a challenge to design. Nevertheless, the long sweeping flush deck of North Carolina and her streamlined structure made her far more graceful than earlier battleships. Her large tower forward, tall uncluttered stacks, and clean superstructure and hull were a sharp break from the elaborate bridgework, heavy tripod masts, and casemated secondary batteries which characterized her predecessors.

So, if you find youself in a diesel-fume, lead-paint, and heavy-equipment mood, a trip aboard the USS North Carolina will no doubt be a welcome alternative to all things fragile.

European Globes are coming out on top

This is the best used globe I have seen lately. I’ve had to switch over to the european EBay web sites to step up the quality of the search results. I let this globe pass without bidding though, since the bidding topped out at $482. The globe comes from the Columbus globe company in Germany and was manufactured during the 1930’s. So, it looks like a mint-condition period globe is worth a lot of money to what I can only assume is a group of collectors having an interest in artifacts from the WWII German era.

I am starting to conclude that the best globes are, and have been, made in Europe. The American makers, Cram and Reploglobe, seem to have produced globes that look like a crayon drawings compared to the cartographic drawings of the European manufacturers.

To get an idea of this, here’s a video showing the manufacturing process for one of the American makers. Click here. Pretty cheap IMHO. Not at all what I’m looking for. So, for now, I’m still weighing my options…