Tender work

[Edgar Lowrance]

When the Special Friends work session ended on November 13th, additional work was needed on the truss rods.

This past week CMO Marty Knox and member Don Bayer completed repair work on those truss rods. Now the only work remaining is to hang one end sill and attach a few deck timbers. A mini session is planed within the next few weeks for about 4 people and a couple of hours to complete this work. Then the Friends work will be completed on the Tender. Marty Knox will install the air line at at a later date.

[Rich Murray]

Ed, those truss rods you talk about. I was told they run fore and aft and are there to actually bear the brunt of the pulling forces. Is that correct?

[Bill Kepner]

I'm not sure you can call them truss rods because they are completely straight (or they should be); no vertical lift is involved. They do run from coupler pocket to coupler pocket and do bear the brunt of the pulling forces, since they are bolted through the castings. The tender frame itself is not very heavily built, IMHO. It's just as they were set up before, there would have been a limit on how much force :-)

[Rich Murray]

Thanks for confirming that Bill.
Now of course that brings up the question of how they perform when running in reverse. :)