A Shipwright in Training

Last Sunday a couple came into the shop while I was working. We got to chatting, and after a while the guy says, “we’ve got this time share condo on the water for a whole week, but we can only use it for the weekend. How would you like to have it for the rest of the week? It’s huge, has a pool, a sauna, and a jacuzzi bath!”

I said, “well, ok.”

It was a very nice place, and it was wonderful to have a king sized bed instead of my little rabbit warren.

There’s the Pell bridge beyond the fishing docks. Not a bad little view, eh?
Then on Wednesday, an excellent shipwright returned my call about working for him part time, and he agreed to hire me. I went in today and had a great time. He’s the kind of boss to just hand you a project and trust that you’ll ask for help if you need it. At the same time, he also gave some very good pointers about things I wouldn’t have thought about, so I didn’t screw anything up. I’ll try to work for him a few more days before the holidays as well. I think I’m going to learn a ton there. He’s already got me working on a project that I’m blown away by… scarfing a new segment on stem onto a Herreschoff 12 1/2. This is a job that takes HUGE precision as far as I can tell, and involves a lot of very tricky cuts. Nothing like jumping in with both feet!
Then on Friday we had a yankee swap (gift exchange) and I ended up with 5 lottery tickets. I thought my luck was so good that I’d score huge. I ended up with $2. Ok, it’s not a fortune, but it’s not bad really. Beats a poke in the eye.

Guess what? Rhode Island is rural!! Go figure. Farming is a big way of life here on Aquidneck Island (home of Newport, Middleton, & Portsmouth) and they have a great Harvest Fair here. There’s an antique tractor parade, and most of them have the farmer’s kids doing the steering. YOu can kind of see this in the 2nd tractor in line here.

There’s also a greased pole climb (I think the grease was pretty much off by the time this kid went up), but nevertheless it was pretty impressive.

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It took the better part of the day, but the stem rabbet is done.  At least the port side.  Kevin gets to do the starboard side.  I also get to plank the port side… this way if there are planking problems you’ve got no one to blame but yourself. 

So, here’s how it started.  First couple of cuts there next to the bevel gauge.  I used the bevel gauge first to copy the proper angle for the rabbet.  Once you’re pretty sure what the proper angle should be (this is best explained by looking at a video… just take my word for it, you have to get an accurate read on what the angle should be first) you then attempt to carve a little angled slot into the stem where one side of the slot is your desired angle.  This angle changes along the length of the stem, so you’re constantly readjusting it as you go. 

9:20 am, a couple of slots cut.

1:00 pm a couple of slots now connected up to form a continuous rabbet.  Once you’ve got a lot of slots, the connecting cuts move along pretty quick.

2:15 pm.  The whole rabbet is now roughed out.

We use a little scrap of wood called a fid to test the angle.  It’s 1/2″ thick, the same as the planking, and it shows us what the planking will look like as it enters the rabbet.  When you cut it right, the fid will be coming in at the correct angle, there will be no gaps between the fid and the walls of your cut, and the top edge of the fid will come just to the scribed rabbet line.  Here’s a good fit.

That’s all there is to do with the rabbet for now.  Final tweaking happens once the stem is attached to the boat and we start the actual planking.  One full day of work, and all there is to show for it is a groove in wood.  But, it’s a good groove.

Nancy from work, and KC, Samara, and Maxx were in town today and I got to show them around the place.  It was great to see them, and to feel reconnected to Madison life.  Nice nice nice.  At dinner out, KC surprised Nancy and I with a birthday chocolate volcano (we share the same birthday in November) and piles of ice cream.  Amazing how fast sleepy Maxx rose to the challenge of eating that puppy.

I’m definitely the luckiest guy I know.

Toolbox and Mallet. The handle looks like a big mustache or wings. I like it, although it’s not like the workmanlike handles on the rest of the boxes.

This is the traditional version.

The handle is something I came up with. The idea was to have a flat surface that I could do a little work on if I needed a spot while I was working on a boat. Like a little workbench. The box is made of pine and the handle is oak. The mallet is oak and is coated with shellac. Today we started on making a a backing out plane. This is a wooden plane that has a slightly convex bottom (rounded side to side) and is used for putting a slightly round surface on the inside of planks so that they fit snugly up against the curved frames.

Tonight was a coctail party designed to separate wealthy folk from their money for the good cause of supporting us. We didn’t have to talk or thank people or anything, thank goodness. As one student said when asked if he was going to come, “you had me at ‘open bar and free food.’” And the bar was very very open. Much dancing and cavorting, and a good time had by all. Luckily I’m an old fart with good sense so I walked home by 10 while the younger set went out bar hopping.

First weeks at school are usually pretty easy, and it’s been about par for the course here as well. The first week they do a lot of reading the shop safety manual out loud to us and then showing us the various power tools we’ll be expected to operate. It’s not all review, though, becuase I’m realizing that when I’m in a shop I’m not usually thinking about the safety of other people. For instance, they want us to be particularly mindful of areas known as “kickback zones” behind certain tools… well first of all, I don’t get kickback because I know how to operate a saw, but it’s becoming clear to me that I need to be mindful of this zone when other people are using the saw… I could get hurt by someone else being a bozo. I also am thinking more about how my actions could affect someone else, and that’s a change. Normally it’s just me in the shop.

I’ve started to make friends with some of the other students. Jessie is a fellow 1st year, and she and her sweetie live 2 houses away from me. She’s been out of the Air Force for about a year where she was a vehicle mechanic and had been doing welding repair work on trains since then. It drove her nuts, so she came here to learn a more satisfying skill, but she’s dead green to the whole woodworking thing.

The IYRS teaching style is pretty much a “show them the basics and toss ‘em in…” this works fine for me and other folks with some woodworking background, but some of the students, like Jessie, are using their tools for the first time. I think they need some improvement in how they handle these kinds of students (there are a number of them) and get them up to speed.

So, first days…

Yesterday we spent the afternoon sharpening tools since many of the students were using their chisels and planes for the very first time. There wasn’t nearly enough time to do it well, and a lot of folks were frustrated by the process. I went in early today with Jessie to help her get a couple of her chisels in shape, and we’ll do that again for the next couple of days. Today we were given a number of joints to cut / chisel. Again, it was “here’s the joints, start on them and I’ll be coming around to check on your work.” A number of us just got right to work, and I had a friendly competition with a fellow across the bench from me about the tightness of our joints. We’ve both got a perfectionist streak and we want to make seamless, perfect examples of each joint. I did well, but it’s humbling really to do what you think will work and realize you missed keeping an edge perfectly square so that the joint is off by a half-pencil width. I know, not much, but when you get a perfect crisp joint, that looks like a chasm. Today we did a simple half-lap and half lap dovetail, a blind mortise and tenon (i.e., one where the tenon does not stick all the way through the mortise), and a bevel lap joint. Tomorrow we’ll do some dovetails, and a through mortise and tenon joint.

I think the primary purpose of this exercise is to get students just using their tools and to see who knows what they’re doing.

So, the next few days will involve a lot of subtle guiding for Jessie and some of the other newbies (I don’t want to step on the instructor’s toes). There’s no way they’ll get to the level of the more advanced students, but they can at least get to the level where they know what needs to be done to progress.

Jan just left today. She’s been here since Friday morning and it’s been really nice seeing her. We visited one of the Newport mansions, and since I’ve been in school she’s visited 4 others (The Breakers, Marble House, Chateau-sur-Mer, and Rosecliff). Holy cats… that’s a lot of mansions. The truly amazing thing is that these insanely large, lavishly decorated places were often only in use for about 6-9 weeks out of the year.

Those are the kinds of people who will be buying the boats I’m going to be building.