Monday. Again.

Tech Tip Tuesday

 One thing most people wonder about is where to find good wood for their boat-building project.  Let me tell you it isn't always easy.  Very often people wander into a "big box store" and wonder why they can't find what they are looking for.  Simple.  The big box is targeted at folks who are building homes, decks and sheds - not boat builders.  This means you're going to need to look a bit harder. 

Ok, so you head over to your "local" lumberyard that you found in the yellow pages.  Chances are they've got some of the wood that you might be looking for.  Perhaps a bit of Western Red Cedar or maybe some Douglas Fir, Cypress, Redwood and the like.  Plywood will be in abundant supply, but not likely BS1088 marine grade plywood.  Some brass hardware might be in evidence, a bit of stainless steel.

So now you delve a little bit deeper into the yellow pages.  You find a hardwood or specialty lumber supplier and you can now get a wide variety of domestic and foreign hardwoods - perhaps even some marine grade plywood, too.  Selection is usually decent, but the prices are somewhat high.

The next step is a difficult one for many woodworkers and boat builders, but usually a good one.  Sometimes it's an advertisement, sometimes it is somewhere you see when you are out driving, sometimes it's word-of-mouth, but however you find out, you go to the source - the sawyer and the sawmill.  Some sawmills are pretty permanent and organized operations like the one below.  Some are a bit more "fly-by-night" - a portable bandsaw mill located at a timbering site.   These are the connections that you want.  The closer you can get to the growing tree, the cheaper the lumber usually is, and the better selection you will get.

In my case I was looking for Northern White Cedar which does not grow locally to me.  However, I knew by word-of-mouth that this particular sawmill sold it - which surprised me.  I called ahead to see if they had what I was looking for and drove up to the mill.  The image below shows what I saw on arrival - logs, offcuts and stacks of lumber.  All a good sign.  The sawyer pointed me to a small stack of lumber about 10' from the saw.  It was a jumbled-up mix of short, generally narrow stock that looked pretty nice.  He also pointed to the pile to the right of the offcuts and said that I could look through both for what I needed - which was very kind of him.  (Note the hood of the car in the lower right)

Immediately to the right of the car, was the planing mill and the pile was between the stack of lumber you see next to the car.   I went through the pile and re-stacked it up on ties sorting it by width and length when I was done.  I then went to the pile in the back and looked through that - re-stacking the lumber when I was done.

Considering the quality (and small quantity) of the stock that I bought, I was pretty pleased with the price - $3 a board foot.  He was kind enough to lower the price from $3.50 to $3.00 for the longer stock I picked from the back pile because he was pleased that I had neatly re-stocked the lumber.  He also commented that I was welcome to come up and pick through stock anytime I wished.  I also took the time to speak with him about what he generally had to offer, how he seasoned his stock and how long the wood that I'd purchased had been milled and drying - all of this is nice information that you won't find in a lumberyard or big-box store.  He also quoted me prices for other lumber he had - all at attractive prices and good quality. 

The pile I selected from was to the right in this image behind the board.  Can't get too much closer to the tree than 20' from the bandsaw mill!  I later found out why they carried the stock I was looking for - they own mills in the northern part of the state where it grows and ship "local" stock from those mills south and vice-versa.  It does pay to go to where the stock is cut and talk to the sawyer!

Wordless Wednesday

One.Last.Sheet.

 

The picture above is from the kitchen at work.  Our office manager is the person who tends to be saddled with changing rolls of paper towels.  She was out of the office for a few days before Thanksgiving and on the day after she left, we arrived at the state that is viewed above.  One last sheet.  I decided to do a little experiment and see what happened - so, I did nothing.  It became like a game, played with chess-like precision and cunning.  I watched as people came into the kitchen with their own paper towels from somewhere else.  I watched people shake their hands and dirty dishes off into the sink when they would normally just grab for a paper towel.  It was truly an amazing exercise in psychology, really.  It took several days before anyone bothered to replace the roll - and that was me the day before Thanksgiving.

The image below was taken at home and is actually the more threatening situation.  It is (was) a roll of toilet paper.  Literally one sheet was left on the roll - if that.  I'm not sure you could have even dislodged the sheet from the cardboard tube in the middle.  Ironically, there is a container in the bathroom next to this toilet which stores spare rolls of toilet paper, so it isn't a big deal to replace the roll, but generally, nobody could be bothered to change the roll.  For the longest time, I wondered if anyone in the house actually knew how to remove the little spring-loaded axle from the center of the toilet roll to replace it.  A really, really long time.   This happens at work as well - a lot - and I often comment that I feel really comfortable at work - it feels just like home.

 

I must admit, however, that recently I've been finding an even more curious situation in the kitchen and bathrooms at home.  Since the bilge-rats (gerbils) arrived, we discovered that they love to play with the toilet and paper towel rolls.  They run trough them and chew them to bits, being the viscous beasties that they are.  Household members have taken to giving these toilet rolls to the gerbils, and now you don't see the last sheet, you just find the bare naked axle or paper towel stand.

Thought for the Day

If you think you're too small
to have an impact,
try going to bed
with a mosquito in the room.

You are what you eat.

I always figure that if you are what you eat (consume) you must also be what you read. When I was in high school we had a man who was the head of the English department who proudly wore a pin that read "I read banned books". He also ensured that the students had some of those books in the curriculum including such books as Huckleberry Finn, Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird. Another teacher taught world literature including works by Chinua Achebe and Graham Greene and utopian literature including Animal Farm. They really worked to expand what you thought about what you read as well - to think more critically.


Today, my DW, who is a teacher and I both find that we have an extensive library. When we first met, I didn't exactly realize the extent. She had three large bookshelves in her apartment and more books in her classroom. When we moved into our first home, I made 4 medium-sized bookcases that were full immediately upon installation, but with more boxes of books in our basement. We ultimately sold the three large bookshelves. (I never hear the end of this from her...)

At the moment, I'm in the process of building a large bookshelf assembly for the living room. It's about 9' wide and 7' tall. I'm sure that when this is done, it will be full as well. The pictures above show some of the bookshelves in our house and a bit about what I am. There are cookbooks, how-to gardening books, travel books, home design and home improvement books, woodworking, boatbuilding and boat handling books. Still, we do have a "balanced diet" with some "junk food" - DW is fond of picking up paperback novels in a book exchange at our local transfer station. (Ok, "dump")

I suppose that there are exceptions to the "you are what you read" part. While I have books about various methods of canoe and kayak building, I'm also expanding my selection into sailing books and historical books about sailing canoes. I'm not a sailor yet, but perhaps I will eventually become one, someday.

Say.

Say what you mean,
mean what you say,
and do what you said.

Say by John Mayer