Smith Mountain Lake boatwright restoring rare 1921 'Dippy' work boat

Alan Frederick said patience has been an essential virtue.

Frederick, 68, has devoted hundreds of hours to date in the restoration of the antique “disappearing propeller boat” now housed in his shop at Smith Mountain Lake.

“I always call this my love-hate boat,” Frederick said.

He bought the 1921 “Dippy” for $500 in 1992 from a competitive water skiing acquaintance in Oswego, N.Y.

Frederick has restored three other boats, including a 22-foot 1948 Chris-Craft Sportsman Sedan and a 20-foot 1948 Chris-Craft Custom Runabout.

But the Dippy, also called a “Dispro,” presents unique challenges, he said.

Each of the skiff’s cypress planks features several exacting bevels Frederick must replicate by hand. The “lapstrake” construction, in which planks lap one edge over another, and the copper clinched nails that fasten the planks together make them tough to remove, Frederick said. In addition, two planks must be joined together to stretch the full length of the 16-foot-6-inch Dippy he owns.

Frederick, a native of Buffalo, N.Y., is chairman this year of the 23rd annual Antique and Classic Boat Show and Festival held by the Smith Mountain Lake Chapter of the Antique and Classic Boat Society. The event begins at 10 a.m. today at Mariners Landing in Huddleston.

His goal is to complete the Dippy well before the 2014 show. He estimates needing to devote another 300 hours before it will be water-worthy.

Frederick named the boat “Maude” to honor an indefatigable maternal grandmother who seemed capable of tackling any task.

“I think it will be a rugged little boat when we get all through,” he said.

The summer 2013 issue of The Rudder, the quarterly magazine for the national Antique and Classic Boat Society, featured an article by Dispro authority Paul Dodington. He reports that the disappearing propeller boat originated in 1914 on the Muskoka Lakes, about 100 miles north of Toronto. Production began in earnest in the spring of 1916 by the Disappearing Propeller Boat Co., peaked during the 1920s and then ceased in 1958, Dodington writes, when fiberglass hulls and outboard motors offered more convenience.

Today, less than 10 percent of the 3,100 boats built survive, “but their present custodians are fiercely proud of the peculiar capabilities of their unique craft,” he reports.

Frederick said the versatile little boats first became popular with people who had summer retreats on islands on northern lakes notorious for floating logs and rocky bottoms. The Dippys feature an amidships mechanism that automatically kicks the propeller up into a cast-iron housing to prevent damage if the prop encounters an underwater obstruction.

“They were work boats,” Frederick said. “They could carry a lot of weight. They were very good in shallow waters and they were very dependable little boats.”

For a time the boats were built in both Canada and the United States. The U.S. operation was in North Tonawanda, N.Y., where Frederick, his wife, Jean, and daughter, Jennifer, lived for nearly 30 years. Experts told Frederick his boat was built in North Tonawanda.

He said he was skeptical when his water skiing friend first told him he had a Dispro at home that he had never gotten around to restoring.

“I knew they were quite rare,” Frederick said.

The man had stored the boat in woods near his house.

“And it was stuffed with leaves and garbage and bees’ nests, you name it,” Frederick said. “We got stung a number of times getting that boat out of there.”

And the careless storage led to rot in parts of the boat constructed of white oak — such as the keel, forward and aft stems, and ribs. The rot-resistant cypress planking fared better but Frederick said many planks need to be replaced because of other damage. He said he has a source for cypress in Buffalo.

“I’m trying to preserve as much of the boat as possible,” Frederick said.

Roughly 70 percent of the original wooden components will probably require replacement, he said.

In 1964, Frederick went to work with his father, Glenn Frederick, at Frederick Machine Repair in Buffalo. He eventually took over the business, which is run now by Jennifer and her husband, Jim Kelly.

Frederick retired in 2012 and he and Jean moved in April of that year to lakefront property they had acquired about 22 years ago in the Wirtz area of Franklin County. The former machinist’s shop is 1,500 square feet and features an array of stationary tools designed for woodworking. It also houses the Chris-Craft Sportsman Sedan, which he plans to flip to address problems with the wooden hull.

Frederick said he finds satisfaction in restoring antique and classic boats, especially wooden watercraft that might otherwise literally feed someone’s fire.

“I just don’t want to see them go up in flames,” he said. “It’s like critical care in the hospital. You can give them new life.”

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