KQED presents a new eight-part series, Ultimate Restorations, featuring the spellbinding restorations of irreplaceable masterpieces.
Antiques Roadshow meets This Old House in Ultimate Restorations, an eight-part series featuring the marvels of engineering from America’s grand history of ambition and innovation. From the 1880s through World War II, the United States advanced the science of aeronautics, propulsion, navigation and sound with inventions that were both functional and artistic: locomotives, fighter planes, yachts and the world’s largest pipe organ. Sadly, few of these icons from our past remain. Now, eight national heirlooms are rescued from the junkyard and painstakingly restored to their original glory, offering poignant glimpses of days gone by.
Learn how the last surviving American steam yacht went from the opulence of the roaring ‘20s to the bottom of Boston Harbor, and what it takes to restore 136 feet and 125 tons. New technologies like 3D mapping combine with old construction techniques and an exploration of how a steam engine works. After a difficult four-year restoration the Cangarda is triumphantly released into the water … and almost goes belly up.
In Ultimate Restorations, audiences are treated to eight similarly dramatic restorations from coast to coast: the world’s largest pipe organ in Atlantic City; a surviving 1920s fire engine from Kansas City; a Wisconsin “fish car” designed to transport live fish by train; a priceless carrousel; a World War II spy plane; one of the first U.S. yachts to round Cape Horn; and a famous steam locomotive.