Maggie Myers

Introduction and making of ribs

Maggie Myers was built in Bridgeton, New Jersey in 1893. It is owned by Thumper and runs out of Bowers beach, Delaware. This year Maggie was brought in for some major repairs.
	There were several projects planned for this year, one of those was stepping a new mast. Maggie has been without a mast for quite a few years, and Thumper wants to be able to sail the maggie as well as work her. In this picture the new mast is sitting in the foreground.
The first part of this project was rebuilding this side. In this picture you can see a metal plate on the side, that is to protect the side of the boat when the dredge is hauled up onto the boat. Right behind this there is a piece of plywood nailed to the side that is covering up a hole in the planks.
	Another large part of this project was replacing the inner and outer stems. The inner one can be seen here, it is in pretty bad shape, you could actually almost stick your arms all the way around it.
There are basically two ways to replace ribs in a boat like Maggie, the first would be to take off the planks on the outside of the boat and then replace each rib and replank the boat. The second is to remove everything from the interior including the ceiling and then replace the ribs from the inside. This method allows you to take patterns from the inside of the existing planks. In this picture Josk is cutting away the ceiling.
	The outer stem in this picture is rotten at the top, and pretty tore up behind the ice breaker at the bottom.
This is a closeup of some of the ribs. A large portion of the ribs were taken out in buckets because they had turned to mush over the last hundred years.
	After removing two or three ribs a pattern is made for each rib.
Three new ribs are in place now, the ribs are made from local white oak. They are made from two layers of 4 inch oak and are 6 inches thick.
	As we work toward the stern of the boat we find more and more bad ribs, the bulkhead in the background will be the next thing to come out of the boat. All of the ribs forward of this point were replaced the last time that Maggie was at our shop.
Here is a pattern for a rib layed out on some oak.
	After removing the bulkhead and all the rest of the ceiling we found more bad ribs, all of the remaining ribs had to be replaced also.
This is an interesting picture taken through where the stem will be after its replaced. All of the ribs are finished now.