If I'm not around...

I went to the woodworking class that I take and used the time to finish up some projects that I've had in the works for some friends and for the canoe building class that I teach.

Two very good friends of mine like to paddle kayaks, so for their birthdays I'm making them some Greenland style "stick" paddles. They're married, so I decided that I'd do something special - the paddles are made from the same piece of cedar so that they look alike.

I also needed to do some work on the forms for the class that I teach. One problem that we've routinely have is that the students don't clamp the MDF master pattern on top of their plywood when they use the router to trace the patterns. The surface of the MDF is slippery and when they slide, the patterns get messed up - badly. To prevent this from happening, I've put some drill bushings in the patterns - two in each pattern. Drill bushings are pretty expensive ($7 each!) so I was, um, frugal, and used T-Nuts ($0.58 each!) that I drilled out after they were installed so that I'll be able to put a bolt through them to keep the patterns from sliding. We'll see how it goes.

I was also surprised with the following left by one of my very generous students:


A Splintered History of Wood by Spike Carlsen. It looks like a very interesting read from what little I've had the time to skim. The cover notes that it was, "an NPR best book of the year". So, if I'm notably absent, I'm probably reading this!

Wordless Wednesday

Wood-B-Good

I'm happy to be moving today. Let me explain...

A friend of mine who heats with wood was unable to bring in his own wood this year and needed some help getting it in. Some mutual friends had the great idea that we should have a "wood party" to do this for my friend. We plotted and planned for food and drink, tools and equipment and prayed for good weather.

The gods intervened on our behalf with what began as a crisp Fall morning. My father joined me to help and we drove up for the expected 9:00 AM start. We arrived at the house at 9:00 AM to find nobody there. We couldn't hear any tools running, but I knew where they would be and grabbed gloves, hearing protection and my chain saw and headed down to the back field where we were to be working. We arrived to find a dump body truck being loaded with split wood and a Ford tractor with a home-made splitter on a piece of i-beam humming away. The splitter was home-made and could accept up to a 4' length of wood. (It was originally intended for splitting long stock to feed to a maple syrup evaporator's firebox.) There was a second trailer-mounted splitter parked next to a dump body trailer attache to a pick-up. A Kubota diesel 4WD utility vehicle with a dump body was nearby.


Another crew was measuring and cutting the trees which had been dragged out of the woods earlier to stove length. Compared with the 26" and 30" bars on the saws they were using made my little 16" Husqvarna (a limbing saw) look like I'd brought a knife to a gun fight.

When my father and I arrived, we had enough people to crew the second splitter. It didn't take long before all the trees had been cut to length and the saw crew took the Kubota into the wood-lot to look for more standing deadwood. They returned twice with more wood ready to split. We took a break for coffee and baked goods about 10:30. The weather had warmed to the high 70's with a light breeze, but was still a gorgeous, sunny, bug-free day. By 11:45, we'd cut and split every piece of wood in sight and loaded the truck and trailer for the second time. We had a vague idea of how much wood we'd cut, but wouldn't be certain until after we stacked it.

We stacked the first load that had been dumped out and stopped for a leisurely lunch. We got started again and dumped and stacked the remaining wood by about 2:30 PM. We'd cut, split and stacked 5 cords of wood. To put this into perspective, this is 640 cubic feet of wood - a block that is 7' tall, 8' deep and 12' wide. It would completely fill a small bedroom.

A good day's work done. My friend and his wife will be warm for the winter.

Then I got the pleasure of cutting out master patterns for the Ranger. But that's another story for another day.

Yarrr!

It's Talk Like a Pirate Day again!

Not Quite Wordless Wednesday

A while back I put up a post showing a canoe as the "original SUV". Here's another video that really brings that home!

SCORE!

I was called by a friend the other day to let me know that he'd seen a bunch of old WoodenBoat magazines at a tag sale. As I was headed out anyway, I made my way by. I found some gentlemen holding the tag sale who were alumni of the WoodenBoat school and who built and repaired boats. They appeared to really enjoy their boat work with a canoe preparing to be repaired, a Cat's Paw dinghy in progress and a peapod under consideration.

What they had was a cardboard box filled with what a quick perusal showed to be WoodenBoat magazines dating from the late 70's through the 80's - editions that I didn't have. (I once made the mistake of loaning out a bunch of magazines from that time frame and they sadly didn't find their way back to me.) After some discussion they offered me a boat-builder's mafia deal that I just couldn't refuse.

In the box are copies from issue 20 through about issue 76 with some gaps and some duplicates, but generally in good condition. It contains some very dated information and advertising, but also has nuggets of timeless information from designers, builders and experts who are sadly no longer with us. One thing that I find that I really enjoy from these early issues is the illustrations from the technical articles by folks like Maynard Bray and John Gardner. I was particularly tickled to find an article with a picture of a (very!) young Jerry Stelmok in an article about Mick Fahey. Some of this material I've not seen elsewhere.

I also used to be a subscriber to the relatively short-lived Small Boat Journal from the 80's. That's another set of old magazines that I'd like to find as well.

It's awful to be a pack-rat, but some of these things will not come this way again.

Bits and Pieces

No images at the moment - apologies. Pictures to follow!

Foam Box Beam Construction

I put together the foam box beam. Construction involved assembly of the deck to one of the sides to keep the deck flush with the top of one luan side panel and the bottom blocks to the same luan panel. I then spread a layer of the foam adhesive using a notched spreader, bonding the foam to the luan and to itself, placing the foam between the top and the bottom blocks. The notched spreader made for a consistent thickness of adhesive. I had allowed 1/16" for each adhesive layer. Unfortunately, the thickness of the adhesive seemed to be greater than allowed for and the sides bulged.

I also glued the patches to the outer layer of the luan at the center join. After curing, I supported the 16' beam at the ends 2" above the floor. I then stood in the middle of the beam. My roughly 160 pound weight deflected the beam about 3/4". Not bad, really.

Still, I wasn't happy about the bulge and the time to deal with the adhesive.


Foam-less Box Beam Construction

I then tried a similar construction. A piece of 1/2" thick plywood for the deck, 8" wide. Two 6" wide 1/4" thick luan side panels. To join the top and sides, I used 8" long blocks of 2x6" dimensional lumber. While I only made an 8' section, I was pleased with the results. Simply supported at the ends, my 160 pounds in the middle deflected it 1/4". I think it was good, easier to assemble, cheaper and lighter.

Ranger Plans

Plans came in. (*WHEW!*) Master patterns will be prepared from the drawings this weekend. Looking good. I'm hoping to shorten the overall height of the patterns to make the forms less awkward to move. We'll see how I do.

Sign-Up

Tonight was the sign-up for the school where I teach. I have to say that I've never seen a crowd like we had tonight. Let me paint the picture for you. The school offers a variety of classes for a variety of interests. My canoe building class is only one of many. Sign-up runs from 6-7:30 PM in the evening and I figured I was arriving fairly early showing up at 5:00 PM. I dodged through cars parked on both sides of the street and managed to find a parking spot nowhere near the building. People were waiting in two lines - one stretched all the way across the parking lot, the other stretched from the front of the building, down to the street and along the street past the next two houses. I was gobsmacked, to be honest.

Even more surprising for me - according to one of the school's trustees, two of the students who came to take my class had been waiting in line since 1:00 PM and another was waiting since 3:00 PM. Also, my class rarely fills up at sign-up. This time I was full in the first 15 minutes. Amazing. I look forward to another great and interesting year with some new challenges.