At 3:24 PM 3/12/97 -0500, Robert J Carley wrote:
>I hate to ask, but just what is Shipwright's Disease - I probably have it
>and don't even know it, and I don't even know if I want to know.
>I can take a pretty good guess as to what it is, though.
There are times I think we could benifit from a mail list archive that
contains history and FAQs.
Shipwrright's Disease was originally known as Ship Fitter's Disease. I do
not remember the name of the person who first coined the term and defined
it. The original posting was to our parent british car mail list in late
1988 or early 1989, long before the Triumph list was split off.
The original reference was to my TR3 rebuild. I was originally going to
take The Once and Future TR3A off the road for a couple of months and
spruce her up a little. Well every time I took a part off I discovered a
disaster underneath and the project got bigger. It turns out the my car
was badly worn out. The previous owner's restoration consisted of wire
brushing the second rustiest TR3 I have ever seen, laying down fiberglass
over the holes and painting it. My sprucing ended up becoming a complete
restoration project where I have spent years completely disassembling the
car and reassembling her with new or like new parts.
Here is the original description of shipfitter's disease:
One day, a boat owner noticed that his cabin light was burnt out and
decided to replace it. When he unscrewed the bulb, he noticed that the
lamp socket had a crack in it. We while he was at it, he thought he might
as well go ahead and replace the socket. When he removed the socket, he
noticed that the wiring was frayed and insulation cracked. He decided that
since he had already done most of the work to get at the wiring, it made
sense to replace it now while the lamp socket was removed. As he was
stripping the wire off the beam, he noticed that the beam had dry rot. The
boat was moved to a dry dock for a complete rebuild because the bulb burnt
out.
TeriAnn Wakeman "Large format photographers look
Santa Cruz California at the world upside down and
twakeman@scruznet.com backwards"
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