Post #652537 by tiki1963 on Tue, Sep 18, 2012 9:46 AM

Ok, fans of the decrepit and infirm!

Here's the latest on, Palmer, the Pride of Chicago's status report from Oceanic Arts in sunny Whittier, California, USA (they take all major credit cards):

Good news! Palmer is in much better condition than we anticipated. God knows what couldda been hiding under all that nasty paint, but alas, it's just not bad at all really.

I guess it's a testament to 2000 year old redwood meat.

Palmer's visible crack (we just say "no" to crack) was actually the biggest issue...nothing else was apparently that bad.

Yes, there is some dry rot and yes, he'll need some wood filler but he's very stable and what I feared was a lot of rot at his base in the rear was really just his natural shape. (pix courtesy of OA)

Chief Bob ordered Chief Leroy and his tiki warriors to assess the damage, which they did.

Once they got him up and flipped over, he revealed a much better condition than we hoped. Here's the master probing Palmer on his anvil of tiki:

His base is actually really strong. If you count the rings, you can see where Jesus was born and when the Beatles released the White Album....cosmic:

Again, all parts are pretty solid. His head does have a dry rot hole from either watching a lot of Roger Corman pictures or a failed encounter with Jeffery Dahmer, but either way, Palmer can be brought back and fortified.

Then, Leroy attacked the nasty surface paint like a rabid woodchuck and pulled all that crap off.

Here's worst of the dry rot holes which is really not too bad:

As you can see, the wood is really pretty and very salvageable. He's already starting to look more like a Barney West again:

Once the cracks are filled and fortified, we'll begin the poly-chroming. Very delicate work but no one does it quite like Leroy Schmaltz.

That's it until the next update!