*OUT OF SPACE ERROR*

In my canoe building class, I teach people to build Mac McCarthy's design of the Wee Lassie and Wee Lassie II canoes.

There is a reason for that.

At the school where I teach the class, the workshop is fairly small and is in the basement of the building. The basement is reached via a set of stairs from a lobby and you have to make some fairly interesting turns to get a strongback down into the shop. Across the parking lot from the building is a small barn. In this barn, we get to store materials and boats in progress. This is important as we cannot leave the boats in the shop during the week as it would interfere with other classes, and it would be too difficult for my students to schlep their materials back and forth every week.

The Wee Lassie is about 11'-6" long and the Wee Lassie II is about 13'-6" long. Both boats are 28" wide. The Wee Lassie II gets down into the basement with a bit of difficulty. Once all the material has been milled, we move aside some of the power tools and can just fit 6 canoes in the shop to work on them.

Just.

I've had a student who purchased plans for a Newfound Woodworks Osprey kayak. It's roughly a 16' long, 24" wide kayak. I have real concerns about getting the boat in and out of the shop. Also, because of the differences in the form from a canoe, I've got serious concerns about storing it. It's a neat project, and I think it would be fun to work on, but I think it is too big and too "different" of a project to try to wedge into the class. I worry that it will be a distraction. Kayak builds are also much more involved and I don't think that the student could finish the boat in the allotted time. I've got some plans for some smaller kayaks and would like to propose them, but I still think that building a kayak in a class for canoes would still be an issue.

Osprey

I have yet another student who purchased plans for a Sandy Point Boatworks Bufflehead canoe. At 14'-6" and 33" wide, it pushes the limits of size, but not technique. We'll have to see if we can fit

Bufflehead

If you're tempted to build a cedar strip kayak, I highly recommend Ted Moores' book Kayak Craft - a thorough study on the subject. Also, Newfound Woodworks and other sources have great DVD's to walk you through the process.

No, I don’t think that’s what I said...

A repost, but a good one brought up again by the recent lunar eclipse.

The other night, we were riding in the car and my wife and I were talking about the lunar eclipse in the car. My son, in the back seat, had partially heard what we were talking about and wanted to get in on the conversation about the “egg-lips” on the moon.

It can be pretty funny when children think they’ve heard something correctly and try to repeat it. We used to keep a list of things my daughter said when she was growing up. They were simply referred to as “M****isms”. Two that come to mind are "stressed-out meat" - Sesame Street to the rest of us - and Christmas in a tree. (Also driving down the to road in December - "Look Mommy, Christmas in a tree!"). I hope that the list got backed up from my wife’s computer before the hard drive died. Otherwise, I might have to pay to get the drive restored just to get that list back.

After hearing about the egg-lips, one of my co-workers brought up a similar incident that happened at his house. His two young sons were upstairs when the youngest one came down the stairs in tears. His said that his older brother had been teasing him and told him that he had “Reptile Dysfunction”. Of course, my co-workers response to his son was, “What’s the matter, Al? Can’t get your lizard up?” At which point he broke up laughing while his very confused son just stared at him.