There is also a product available at art supply stores called Gesso that can be used for coating and smoothing foam. It's water based (like very thick latex paint) and sands easily when dry if needed. In a pinch you could make your own by putting talcum powder or plaster of paris in left over interior latex paint until it is the consistency you want.

 

My Word Gary!! Talk about working outside the box. Yes you would be the
one to saws-all a perfectly good boat in half to mount an antique bike
engine to. Way cool. I have to see a vid of you and the little woman out
in this thing.
I once put a lawn mower engine on a lower unit. Built an adapter plate to
bolt the engine to it. Than used a piece of hydrolic hose and clamps to
put the shafts together. Only problem we has was the round gas tank
was not clamped down well enough and it vibrated loose and went deep
six on us. We fixed that after getting a tow in and ran it all summer. Was
only a 3 hp on a wide 16 foot skiff. But for us 12 year olds it was great.

We was the Kings of the straights that summer. Or the Pirates of Juan De
Fuca. We headed for Alaska in it that summer. Made it from Sekiu to
Neah Bay. The Cost Guard stopped us there and made us go home.

Most likely saved our lives. We only had 15 gallons of gas as it didn't look
that far on a map.

 

Now that there is funny!

 

Then Briggs and Stratton stole your idea and built a boat motor. We have a couple of them. They sound like a lawn mower coming across the lake. We refer to it as "mowing the lake".

 

All of us lifetime chronic tinkerers have built contraptions with lawn mower engines. I guess our dads used up all the 15 dollar model Ts we always heard about, along with the 30 dollar military harleys packed in cosmoline. With all that hp, we would have hurt ourselves for sure! Like you Arctic, I was fabricating since I was a kid. Just that my dad was an insurance salesman and didn't have any tools, so I had to improvise. First is my b&s powered inboard I built 43 years ago when I was 17, then the iceboat I built the following winter. And yes, the shaft coupling on the boat was a piece of heater hose, but the engine shaft was 5/8 and the prop shaft was 3/4 so I had to wrap the engine shaft with a couple of turns of aluminum flashing to get the hose clamps to grip. In the end I used double hose clamps on the engine side to cut down on the squealing. My folks had moved us from Washington State to New England in my teens and I had no idea how to skate or play hockey so I did the thing I knew how to do. Then the cops came down with a megaphone and called me off the ice because they actually thought I might harm all the skaters. Now I have used up all the grace I've been given for hijacking the fabrication thread. Maybe next winter I'll start a thread about 'miss-spent youth' or ' how we occupied ourselves without electronic devices'.

 

Here's a little project I did so that I could fit my race boat in my garage next to my '50 F-1.
I have the photos and descriptions in this album. https://flic.kr/s/aHsjwrjYwk

Thanks for looking!

 

Gary you always amaze me. I love the way your posts bring me back
to some of the crazy things I did along these lines in my youth.
I am all for you starting a thread along these lines Bud. I may even
contribute.

 

Here is a good example of another form member helping me out. I saw TonyB55's post on the transmission fixture that he built. Sent him a PM, he sent me a drawing and a few more pictures and presto now I have one too. Thanks again Tony.

 

These pictures of early adventures into tinkering are great! Here is one of my early wheeled contraptions. My brother and I managed to scrounge up some soap box derby wheels. So with some pilfering from the scrap lumber pile (including the nails to hold the thing together) we managed this simple cart. This is a later version where we added upholstery.
That's my brother and little sister on the thing

 

Now yer killin' me too Bobby!. That thing is Awesome! I grew up on a long hill and those cars were a first project for all of us. I thought Bill Linscott was SOOOO lucky because his dad worked at Boeing and he had an electric drill in his workshop and we got to use it!!! Arctic, let's figure out a thread.

 

You guys are bringing back some memories for me....like my gravity racer and my first old truck at age 12.

 

WOW, you were spoiled, an electric drill. nice. We had to use a hammer and screwdriver (as a chisel) to chip out a hole in our 2 x 12 for the center bolt for out steering (dad wasn't too thrilled with the way we destroyed his screwdriver)

Bobby

 

I'll never forget when Bill's dad drilled a hole in a 1/2 rod for a cotter pin to hold the axle. Up until then we scrounged for an axle rod with a cotter pin hole on the outside end, which held the wheel on. The axle was affixed to the underside of the 2x4 'main axles' with a row of 8d nails on each side, bent over and clenched down tight. Problem was, on a corner, the axle rod would slide out of the bent nails and leave the vehicle. The g forces were just too much. Then Mr. Linscott showed us how to drill a small hole for a nail on the inboard end of the axle, thus eliminating axle slide out and the skidding out of control that ensued. Oh, and I still use a screwdriver for a chisel when necessary (and vice versa) Like there's something wrong with that? !

 

I Hear you about nailing the axle down with bent over nails. What a process. We had to scrounge the nails from the wood pile, beat them back into a relatively straight form (bending them roughly straight, then rolling them along the sidewalk while banging away on them). Yep, we had axle slide out also.....


Look closely at the picture I posted. Notice the left front wheel and the big washer at the axle? When we found the wheels the bearings were very dirty so we decided a good cleaning was in order. Yup, you guessed it, we released about 15 tiny ***** to go rolling down the driveway into the same steep street that gave us such a thrill. WE never did get them back in the bearing race. Instead we slipped the axle through the "huge" hole in the wheel, but a big washer on and away we went.


Looking back, it was probably a good thing. We got the thing up to about Mach 8 as it was, if we would have had good bearings on all 4 corners we might have reached the sound barrier (in those days land speed records were the rage; Craig Breedlove, The Spirit of America, The Green Monster, The Blue Flame, etc)


Woohooo

 

OK, I understand you were flying. But just to clarify, Mach 8 is already 8 times the speed of sound... So if you were at sea level, that would have been about 6,000 mph.

How long was that driveway? And why didn't you go to work for NASA?