TOPIC: Quick Intro!

Greetings, All!

I didn't see a section for "Newbie Introductions", but I wanted to make a quick intro before I start pounding away at the keyboard ... ...!

My name is Grant ... I'm 62, and was virtually raised building fiberglass boats and other 'glass products. In the late '50s, my father, Roger, started a small alley-way shop in Redding, CA, custom-fabricating wood-fiberglass composite boats, and called it Plastics Unlimited. 'Round about 1961, he bought out all the molds and left-over stock of Kimball Boats (just across the alley from Trailorboat in San Rafael, CA) and became the first 'glass boat builder north of Sacramento. About the same time, he acquired a set of molds for a 17' semi-flat bottomed ski/pleasure boat from a local fellow hot rodder, Bill Pierson, that gave him what was then considered a "full line" of boats, from outboard fishing/utility to fast inboard ski craft. There was also an 8' pram/sailing-dinghy, an 8' flat-bottomed flat-decked miniature ski boat with a 10hp Briggs & Stratton go-kart engine turning a 5" Berkeley Jet Pump we called the Mini-Jet, and a 10' version with two pumps and B&S engines called the TwinJet.

PU was a relatively small company with only 3-5 employees and my younger brother & I, but we all cranked out quite a few boats all through the '60s. Family dynamics being what the were at the time, "working" for my father wasn't really working out, so after graduating from high school, I followed some friends (and my Dad's former shop foreman) up to White City, Oregon, to work for Jim Lloyd and his newly-formed Superior Fiberglass, where we built tri-hulls, V-hulls, and semi-V-hulls that were basically knock-offs from Jim's previous shop in Anderson, CA, Shasta Fiberglass. I worked on and off for Jim through three iterations of his company and two other owners before he got it back and then sold it again in the late '70s, whereupon I left for the oilfields near the end of 1979. Some might know of those boats ... Marlin!

Suffice it to say, I've got lots of memories and more than a few good stories, but I'll save those for a later date. The reason I joined this Forum is that, after almost 20 years of storage, I just dug out our old ski boat to freshen it up and pump some new life into it! It's one of PU's 17' semi-flats that we called the Galaxie, built in the mid'60s with a 364ci nailhead Buick V8 and Berkeley jet pump ... it's not particularly fast (I think the best we ever saw was about 50mph), but it's extremely powerful and was the only boat on Lake Shasta (up here in far-northern CA) at the time that could pull 8 single-skiers at once (and, we regularly pulled 6). Once I get it cleaned up, I'll take some photos and post 'em here!

I've also noticed that there is no mention or history in the Library section about Plastics Unlimited or Kimball or the several names that pre-dated our Galaxie ... if there is sufficient interest, I'll see what I can do to find some old brochures and photos to post. My father is still alive at 92, but he's waning, and since we're starting to "thin out" his lifetime of collecting, we're coming across a lot of the old company stuff.

Well, I guess this really wasn't such a "Quick Intro" after all ... ... so, I'll just wrap it up and say, "Nice to be here" ... and 'til next time ...

CHEERS!

Welcome aboard captain.

Grant Whipp,

WELCOME ABOARD.

yours, satx

Glad to have you aboard Grant, welcome. WE would love to see and hear anything and everything you'd care to share with us. The staff can make additions to the FG Library if given permission to use the material, we'd love to have it! Looking forward to hearing and seeing pics of your walk down memory lane.

Welcome Grant. We finally get some expert advice???

Welcome Aboard Grant, thanks for sharing the story, I spent a week on Shasta every summer on a house boat with my brothers jet boat and my 550 jet ski, always the best vacations of my life.
Steve

Thanks! for the warm "Welcomes", Everyone! They're much appreciated!

63 Sabre wrote:

Welcome Grant. We finally get some expert advice???

Well, I don't know how much "expert advice" I'll be able to give ... I pretty much gave up fiberglass when I left Denver, CO, in 1983 ... lots of changes in the industry after all these years!

Today's project ... wash the boat and take pics. It's a beautiful & sunny day in Far-northern California!

CHEERS!

Welcome aboard!

Great to get first hand knowledge.

YES, please get original brochures and photos and price lists, etc for the Glassic Library.

Was Sidewinder somehow affiliated with Shasta Fiberglass at Anderson, CA?

Sidewinder at Anderson, CA was in receivership about 1973. Thompson Bros. Boat Mfg. Co. at Peshtigo, WI (under ownership Saul Padek) bought assets from the receiver in 1974. Everything was moved to Peshtigo and Padek set up a new corporation "Sidewinder of Wisconsin, Inc." to make "Sidewinder" boats.

Andreas - sitting in Peshtigo, WI right now about 300 feet away from the old Thompson Boat factory

Sitting 300 ft. from the old Thompson factory and less than 40 north of Cal (Suamico)

thompsonboat wrote:

Welcome aboard!

... Was Sidewinder somehow affiliated with Shasta Fiberglass at Anderson, CA?

Sidewinder at Anderson, CA was in receivership about 1973. Thompson Bros. Boat Mfg. Co. at Peshtigo, WI (under ownership Saul Padek) bought assets from the receiver in 1974 ...

Thanks for the "Welcome!"

I can't recall whether or not Shasta Fiberglass was the originator of the Sidewinder boats, but yes, Sidewinders were built by SF in Anderson ... again, by Jim Lloyd. Jim sold SF in '69 or '70, then moved up to Medford, OR, and started Superior Fiberglass, moving the production facilities to White City in '71 (tooling remained in Medford for a couple of years ... interestingly enough, I "lived" with a couple of my buddies in the old office building at the Medford facility when I first went to work there). My father & I did some tooling and R&D for JIm while he owned SF, and when things got slow at PU, Jim spirited away our shop foreman, Jack VanEk, who followed him up to OR.

Jim's MO was to start a boat company, build it up, pump it up, and then sell it off and go start another one ... I don't know for sure, but I think he started somewhere in SoCal. While I was working for him in OR, he sold the company at least twice (once to Hooker Industries, the header people, and once to Bell Industries, but I can't remember which was first victim and which was second), and each time he sold it, something would happen and he'd get it back. I was in production, running the chopper gun section, so really didn't have much knowledge of the business ins-and-outs ... but I can tell you, we all felt like ping-pong balls being knocked back & forth between owners and changes of management ... ...! I was really glad to get out!

On to another subject real quick, though ... I haven't looked too thoroughly, yet, but do we have individual "albums" that we can post our pictures to and then attach to our posts? I just took a bunch of pics of our Galaxie and want to share them! I'll see if I can post one, here, as a teaser ... ...! As always ...

CHEERS!

Grant, sorry a little late to this one but welcome aboard, great to have all that background. As Mark said we'd love to have as much info as possible in the library.

Great pic, can't wait to see more!!!!!!!

Bob

I agree, its great to have you here. I believe there are a lot of folks that would benifit from your addition to the library. Thanks for posting!

Well ...

... I'm not exactly sure how I did it (this Forum doesn't work like any others that I belong to), but I managed to put 12 images of the Galaxie in the Gallery ... ...! Have a look and let me know what you think.

Now that the boat is all washed up, the next order of business will be to get the engine running! I'll probably need to flush out the fuel tank and replace the fuel filter, check the plugs, and change the oil first. You may have noticed that the last "tags" on it say "99", but I'm pretty sure that the last time it was on the water was just about 20 years ago ... so I'm sure there's some gunk crusted in or floating throughout the systems ... ...!

Anybody care to guess what the approximate value of this thing might be? My father and I have a little wager going, and I'm betting that he isn't giving the ol' girl enough credit ... ...!

BTW ... we have another boat in our family ... a 14' Glen-L "Zip" with a '59 Merc 45hp outboard that our friend Doug Hodder built in 2000 ... little "Miss Daisy" ... I'll be posting pics of that one in a while.

As always, then ...

CHEERS!

Grant,
Yes the Marlin company and Sierra both in Oregon had purchased some of the Dorsett molds. The 18' cuddy cruiser Marlin come up now and then, the Sierra I don't see too often. Later Marlin had some Glasply molds too, and even built a copy of the Sea Ray 24 and larger. Did you guys use wood stringers in all the boats or were some of them glass stringers?

billr wrote:

Grant,
... Did you guys use wood stringers in all the boats or were some of them glass stringers?

Hi, Bill!

While I was there (off and on, '71-'79), all our hull stringers were wood.
As an aside, I have a very clear memory of one guy nailing his hand to the floor with a pneumatic nail-gun ... not a good day in the shop that day ... ...! (I'm sure that happened at least once in every boat shop!)

CHEERS!

Yes, do please collect and scan any old company literature you may have. Preserving this stuff is key to encouraging folks to saving old boats.

Welcome Aboard grant.

Welcome aboard. I'd love to see all the ones you made.