This fabulous photo – taken along with the other restoration project shots by BLMA Board Member Extraordinaire Varoujan Karentz– could be called, “Three Men and a Catwalk”  This early August, 2009 scene shows the ABCORE craftsmen installing the now-reconstructed catwalk that rings the lantern room.   Glad the lightning rod at the top kept doing its job!  Three things to note here:

•  Earlier in the restoration process, ABCORE discovered that the vertical metal strips that secure the glazing of the lantern room were made of  bronze, and not iron, as it appeared, due to blackening with age.  The brassy finish is as it was when the lantern was new in 1856!

• Part of ABCORE’s job is forensics – scraping and analyzing to learn the metals  aka “fabric” used in the catwalk decking, for example.  A conversation with Keith one day in June, 2009 via cell phone – “live from the tower” showed his enthusiasm in discovering just what the decking was made of – before taking the whole assembly apart and sending it off to a specialist for reconstruction.

• The rotating beacon in the lantern room has not been shut off during the nearly five months of work on the tower.  The members of the ABCORE team worked around it when working inside the lantern. Also, note the emergency lamp on the iron post, which can be lowered to change the bulb – another functioning part of the lantern that was kept operational during the tower restoration.

By late July, the ABCORE crew is scaling the heights of the keepers’ houses repairing the gutter systems before sanding the house exteriors.  You can see the paint peeling – as of early August the buildings were gleaming white, coated with parge, which, btw, used to be pure lime.  Today, it’s a mix of lime and polymers.  The parge coat protects and allows for “breathability” of the brick.  A coat of white paint is applied on top of the parge coat –later in August.

We’re restoring Beavertail Lighthouse, but we need you to help us finish the job.  Your donations help the lighthouse sparkle and shine, as both an historic landmark, and an inspiring center for learning.

This photo shows a lot going on at the lighthouse this summer of 2009.  The experts taking advantage of each dry day this very wet summer are Keith Lescarbeau and his ABCORE Restorations  crew:  Kenny Reid, and Al Vincenzo. Obviously, none of them are afraid of heights! See Keith on the ladder prepping the wooden alcove of the keeper’s house for sanding and re-painting , while Al stands on a board high above him sanding underneath the gutters of the Assistant Keeper’s house [now the museum].  The brick chimney, top and left, is looking ship-shape again after Keith and his crew rebuilt it using the original ‘make and model ‘of bricks!   Check out all the staging for this project: The yellow canvass on the left catches the flaking parge coat as the exterior walls are sanded before the new coats – parge and paint are applied.  On the top of the tower, you can see that the iron catwalkand railing at the lantern base has been removed for crucial restoration of its iron frame.