A Shipwright in Training

It’s been raining most of the time since I arrived. I think I used up all the glorious weather on the way out here. Perhaps I was blessed by the magic bakery truck as I left Madison.

Um, no comment.

Unfortunately I took very few photos of people in Buffalo. Well, very few that I would ever share with anyone. Sorry Cynthia. Sorry Dick. I did, however, get re-amazed at the variety and quality of Buffalo architecture. You’d walk down the street and there would be some cool little detail like this one on a building:

This is just under some window. How great is that??!

After leaving Buffalo I made my way across the lower part of the state to the finger lakes region to visit my old bud Judi.
That’s her on the right. On the left is a friend of hers from the University that joined us on a walk one bright morning. Judi has great wall signs around her house.

We ate very well too. For instance, here’s some raspberry sorbet with mango on the side. See, eating well is something that’s fun and easy to do at home!!

After Alfred, it was back on the big roads and on up to way Upstate NY to visit Lyons and Laura & family at a YMCA camp in Lake George.

That was one fast bike. It stayed with me the whole trip.

Lyons & Co. were staying at the Silver Bay YMCA, an amazing turn of the century place. Laura’s parents actually met at this camp and had their very first kiss on the dock. How many first kisses happened at this place? Too many to count, but looking at the leadership groups filled with teens running around and it makes me happy to think that they’re still happening. One night we were walking back to the cabin and we decided to look at the chapel. Someone was playing a duet with violin and piano up on the altar… no audience, just the two of them focused on the music. It’s that kind of place.

The cabins are the old time Adirondack style that you see throughout new england. Spartan, uneven, cobbled together, charming in every way. The group buildings are large, magnificant structures from the CCC era.

We sailed,

That’s David in the foreground and Laura and Eliot in the other boat. David is a great kid that Lyons and Laura had fostered along with his sister Kat a few years back.

We jumped off of rocks just to prove that the youngsters got nothing on us old fogies. And we didn’t break anything at all.

Laura organized us into a tennis tournament (I didn’t win is all you really need to know), and we spent a good amount of time at the archery range. It’s summer camp!!!

It was hard to leave, but there’s places to go, so off I went. After a night in Northfield with my folks (sorry no photos there either) I finally drove in through the light rain to Newport.

And it’s been raining off and on since then, with a good break for the wooden boat show.

I’ve been building (as usual), but my workshop is in the side yard behind the cool old trailer. With the rain, I’ve had to rig up a tarp and it’s worked quite well.

It’s been interesting using all hand tools, and I particularly like the contrast of using nice planes and Japanese chisels in this primitive location. I don’t have any of my power tools here other than a few cordless drills, so it’s all sawing, planing, chiseling by hand. [Ok, I confess I tried to use Kurt's 18v cordless saws... word to the wise, Ryobi cordless saws are only good for the lightest duty work. They have no guts at all. Bottom line, I did it all by hand.]

I re-did the ladder to my loft first. The old ladder was very much like a normal ladder but with square rungs with the edges pointing up. They hurt my tender little footsies, so I wanted something with wide, horizontal treads. I used some old boards from out back to make this whole thing, which meant dimensioning all the lumber myself. Have you ever tried to rip a 9′ long 2″ thick board using a japanese saw? Well, it’s slow going matey, and you have to do some serious planing when you’re done to straighten up that edge. 8 hours later, though, I had myself a good ladder to the loft and my feet sing a song of thanks to me every night before bed. No glue, just tight joints and screws.

Today I actually sprung for new pine and made some much needed bookshelves. Same deal, no glue. And not being able to leave well enough alone, I put a few little details in like having the shelves slightly proud of the side members and beveling their edges. As long as you’re making it by hand, might as well make it nice.

That’s it for now. 2 good days in the “shop” and I am SO READY for power tools.

Many many miles, good meals, good talks, goodbyes… at last in Newport. I spent most of the afternoon at the Wooden Boat Show and had a great time. Within 15 minutes of chatting with the people at the IYRS booth they had me signed up to do a chunk of time manning the exhibit tomorrow. That should be fun, I’ll get to chat up people interested in the school and talk with them about how I got here, about the work, about how they can sponsor cool students like ME in the coming years through their donations… Most of the afternoon I spent talking to people who build boats for a living. The norm is for folks to have more than one income stream, so one guy manages a marina as well as doing repair and new builds. Another spends part of his time doing the repair / upkeep on the boats he has built in the past year. He finds that he can build about 3-4 complete new boats every year with the help of 1 or 2 other staff and they all do allright. Tomorrow will be more conversations. It’s so cool to see many of the boats I’ve read about in Wooden Boat… I spent at least half an hour talking with the folks who built YNOT (cover of WB a while back), and tomorrow I’m hoping to meet Nat Benjamin of Gannon & Benjamin (the folks who own the shop that the book “Wooden Boats” documented), and more , and more , and more…

Yesterday, I left Lake George where I was visiting my old friends Lyons & Laura at Silver Bay YMCA… oh wow. Imagine “The Shining” without any of the creepy stuff… just a huge wonderful old camp on the shores of a lake nestled in between tree-covered mountains. It was a slice of paradise. It was a blast to hang out with them and the kids (Tommy, Eliot, David & Kat) playing tennis, sailing, jumping off a high rock, watching Kat kick butt at the cardgame Spit. Lyons & Laura & I took about an hour and visited the place where they make Hacker Craft boats on Lake George. Good lord. These things are the absolute Cadillacs of power boats and it was really cool to see where they were built and to talk with the old (and young) fellows that made them. Everyone said how lucky they were to work at this place.

I’ve met 2 of the 3 other folks who live at the place I’m renting here, along with Penny, the sweet and MASSIVE pit bull. It’ll take a little while to settle in, but I’m thinking this is going to be a fine place to call home.

So, all is well. Give me a week and I’ll miss everyone so bad I won’t be able to stand it. Right now I’m just digging the 20 min walk down to the harbor and glad that I don’t have to fight the tourist traffic.

The plan was to leave on Tuesday the 15th. We took some time the Sunday afternoon and rented a bunch of boats out at Lake Wingra.  A dozen or so folks showed up to paddle and sail about before the big party.

Tom and Tammy kayaked.

I sailed a boat with the most awful sails I’ve ever seen.

And Lori’s friend Luda (sp?) from Lithuania got to take a turn in the sailboat!

And Deb, who had car trouble and wasn’t supposed to be able to make it from Milwaukee showed up unexpectedly.  Yay!!
For the Big Party I rented the shelter at the park near our house, and Jan and piles of other people made it into a party.  Really, I did next to nothing, other than talk with Jan about what kinds of food it would be good to have.  Lori and Jan brought all manner of pirate garb and I think I looked quite dangerous and villianous, if I may be so bold as to brag.

Whew.

A final push in the last few weeks and the projects are done. At least to the point where someone else can easily so the little final things needed to make them complete. Like Suzanne’s bathroom. It’s done to the point where someone else can drill the hole and install the faucet and plumb it up.

Original drawings and more or less final product. In fact, we decided that the shelves to the right stuck out too much and so we shortened them so that they just barely protruded from the sink base. We also changed the little stack of open shelves on the left side to be a single shelf that welt across the whole left hand opening. There will also be a tile backsplash that goes from the sink base to the level of the drawer stack.

There’s some close-ups of the wood tops. The left and right side are quilted maple and the center drawer stack is topped with curly birch. The idea was to have the sink appear to be floating on the surface of water and it worked out pretty well I think.

The drawer fronts and edging of the shelves was also quilted maple. I’m quite happy with how it came out.

Next, Gail & Ben’s shelves. The tricky part on these were getting the dye right to blend in with existing Danish furniture as well as working with a Very Red wall. After a number of attempts, I think we got it right. The tops on these shelves are also curly birch, and you can see how they compare in color to the curly birch on bath shelves which aren’t dyed.

And last, but not least was the tool box.

I thought it would be heavy when we loaded it with tools, and it was. Too much for 2 people really, so we have to put the main box in the car and then put in the smaller boxes.
The tupperwear tub contains all my waterstones and sharpening gear.

Tools tools tools. And they all fit!

  Ready to go.

As always, the last few weeks here in Madison have been an almost constant flurry of activity. In retrospect it would have been a good idea to close down my practice on Aug 1 so I could finish the projects I’ve committed to… but at the time I was thinking OH SWEET LORD I NEED EVERY NICKEL I CAN GET BEFORE I LEAVE or some other soothing thought like that. So, now it’s work, break to go to the woodshop, back to work, eat dinner, back to the shop. I think once I’m done with these things, I’ll feel completely lost… what do normal people do with their free time???

Here’s what I’ve been working on.
Nancy and KC’s walnut bookshelves.

The corner detail matches a detail on their bannister, and the wood is stained to match the character of ther 100+ yr old farm house.

Word to the wise: walnut plywood is really expensive.

Project 2: Pass through mailbox. Susan is remodeling her house, and wanted a mailbox that projected through the new living room wall (formerly the porch) so that she could get mail without going outside… like the old time milk boxes. We went through a lot of designs, and came up with a little copper-topped one that she liked. Really, the biggest problem was making sure that both the inner and outer doors sealed well to keep the weather at bay. You can operate the little flag from inside the box by moving a lever.

The siding hasn’t gone on yet, and it will cover that large square of copper that’s been soldered to the mailbox roof. The box will also be painted at some point.

Project #3. Bathroom sink / drawers / shelves. Suz wanted a nice vanity for her upstairs bathroom, so we worked out a nifty thing with a vessel sink on the right, a little stack of drawers in the middle, and a little scooped out counter surface with shelves on the left. The countertops are all quilted maple, and with the sink bowl sitting on top, it should give the impression of a bowl floating on a shimmering surface of water. It’s getting close to done and I’m really pleased with it so far. Photos coming soon.