Wordless Wednesday

Tech Tip Tuesday

One of my former students who took my class last year has decided that he'd like to build another canoe. He built a very nice staple-less Wee Lassie II that he's going to give to his wife for her use. I think that he did an excellent job with the canoe. I'm hoping to be able to post a picture of his boat here for a Wordless Wednesday post.

At any rate, this fellow really wants a slightly longer and wider canoe so that he can use it to fish from. Additionally he wants this longer and wider canoe to be very, very light-weight for carrying in to his chosen fishing haunts. He's chosen the Solo Portage by Rob Macks of Laughing Loon.

In order to reduce the weight of his finished canoe, he's going to try two things. First, he's gone looking for Atlantic White Cedar which is a bit less dense than Western Red Cedar. (22 lb/cubic foot versus 23 pounds/cubic foot) He's also going to be ripping the strips to 3/32" thickness - a 25% savings in the weight of the strips. To that end, I made up another spacer disk to go between a pair of Freud Diablo thin-kerf blades that would allow him to cut two strips at a time. This new gang-sawing set-up; similar to one I posted previously, is seen below:


He's pretty picky, 'tho. He wants a pretty canoe, too. He wants to build a staple-less boat again and he wants to build a canoe with continuous strips so no scarfs show. To do this, I think he needs 15 or 16 foot long stock.

This COULD be a problem, as he has a rather nice, but somewhat small workshop in a barn at his house. As a matter of fact, it's too small for him to rip the strips in a continuous length.

However, necessity is the mother of invention.

Check out the pictures that he sent to me of his solution....

Below is his table saw as seen from the outfeed side. Note that the workbench under the window is at exactly the same height as the table saw's work surface. Pay particular attention to the light colored area directly beneath the window.


Here's the outside of the same window. Again, note the light colored area below the window. Oh yeah, and the hinges...


And, voila, here we have the open infeed doors!


The only thing that I wonder now is if he has enough room or now has doors on the outfeed side, too!

Just a bit of off-beat cubicle humor...

Never, never make your co-workers angry:

Don't get angry at your computer - it's just doing what it's told.

Sometimes it's necessary to defend your cubicle:


Hygiene in tight office quarters IS appreciated:


Sometimes work leaves you feeling a bit torn:

Despite all my rage...

I should note that a former co-worker of mine (who was much more of a "metal head" than I am) used to identify with this song fairly closely. Whenever it came on the radio, he would be singing along in his cubicle.

What its all about...

"Jim Gallagher of Danville, Pa., paddles his kayak across the calm surface of Lake Chillisquaque, White Hall, Pa., while heading back to shore following sundown Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008."
(AP Photo/Bloomsburg Press Enterprise, Jimmy May)

Wordless Wednesday

Wood-b-good, but... (Apologies to Todd Bradshaw :-)

Tech Tip Tuesday

Ok. That's a Nike (tm) "Swoosh" up there.

Tech Tip Tuesday is about my boat building philosophy. I believe in the Nike approach - "Just do it!" (Sorry, Nike...)

Most people look at the complexity of building a wooden boat and think that they can't do it. It's a slightly daunting project - don't get me wrong, it is, but it's a bit like the old joke about how to eat an elephant - one bite at a time. You can do it. Really. It just takes patience and determination. You will probably need to learn some new skills, too. Some skills you can learn from reading about them and doing them yourself. Some skills you will need help from an "expert". This may be a friend with the skills or even a teacher in a structured boat-building course.

Let me give a good example:

A friend of mine started a kayak with my help. He's very good with his hands and a clever guy to begin with, but had never built a boat. The building went in fits and starts and for long periods of time. Sometimes he was thinking or asking about his next step. Sometimes he couldn't work on his boat because it was too cold in his shop. Sometimes he simply had other things to do. It took him about 2 years of elapsed time to build the kayak.

The end result? It's a beautiful boat and he's very happy with it. Others find it to be a beautiful kayak when they see it. In the beginning of his project, he didn't know everything he was going to do or how he would do it, but he went ahead and took that leap of faith.

All you've got to do is to make a start. Just do it.

If you live in the United States...

And you are eligible...

On November 4th, please...

VOTE