Be Green & Flow

Wedding Pics

2012-01-11T16:54:00.000-08:00

Creepy Cool Ghouls

Come with us, it's not scary!

One minute you are having fun...

the next minute they turn on you!

Somehow I can't keep a straight face even during times of vengence!

I think this might be the best picture of all

So pretty

I like this pic the best when she was reading the vows to us, the others I look too serious!

The ring bearer need not cast the ring into the fiery chasm from whence it came!

Micah reading: Love is patient, Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

Cher: "If the sun refused to shine, I would still be loving you. When the mountains crumble to the sea, there will still be you and me."

David: "And so today the world it smiles, your hand in mine, we walk the miles. Thanks to you it will be done, for you, to me, are the only one."

Ring time!

Mine doesn't fit!

Ian, Chanel, Sean, Micah, Devon

This was thee best cake!!! Thanks Devon!

Married on Halloween, happily ever after Brewing Beer

2012-01-11T14:56:00.000-08:00

Off to the Canterbury Cemetary...

It's been forever since I've posted. I don't know if anyone reads these posts, hopefully they do, but if so, I apologize for not posting. It hadn't struck me as important at the time, well, actually it did, and I knew I was slacking, but hey, I got hitched! I'll use that as an excuse! But today I bought ingredients for two batches of beer from Nick at Barry's Homebrew in Fishtown. I'm kinda glad he's there. It's easy for me to get to and to park. The place is clean and well organized and he's got beer on tap for his customers! Reminds me of Canon Beach Surf Merchantile a bit. I'm going to be his newest steady customer. LOL

Wedding pics...
Cher, David, Chanelly and I. Cher and David are Chanel's bestest of friends. They were our only guests as organizing a big wedding with family etc... wasn't our cup of tea.

So here's the deal: Chanel and I couldn't wait to get married and wanted to do it on a special day. She said Halloween and I instantly agreed being that it's like my most favorite day of the year, hers too, AND it's my birthday so I was diggin the idea. Originally we were going to find a nice courthouse and get married, somewhere nice where we could take nice pictures, etc... We settled on one place as it seemed to have a really nice courthouse according to the pics on it's website, but when we went to check it out it actually looked like a county jail, and not anything cool like Eastern State Penitentiary but more like crappy 1970's 15th district police house in Philly. Chanelly says, as we are driving around eyeballing New Hampshire (leaves were in full color), "Why don't we get married in one of these old graveyards?" Since we had already decided on wearing Vampire outfits for the wedding, it just made sense. We found the one in Canterbury to be awesomely creepy with a nice courthouse across the street and an old style gazebo. Perfect. We got the OK from Canterbury city hall. All was set!
Halloween 2011. Canterbury Cemetery (300 years old-ish). Sean and Chanel get married in 2 foot of freshly fallen snow at a eerily misty dusk with most of the colorful leaves still on the gnarly old oak trees in a three hundred year old cemetery dressed as Vampires. It was pretty cool!

Chanel and I did the flowers. We ran around at the last minute looking for the white roses and had to settle for the wee ones. She did the arranging! Excellent work! The coffin with the rings was her idea as well!

I'm going to continue this post as I am having problems loading pictures in this one, See you soon!

SO!!!!

2011-10-13T11:17:00.000-07:00

Tonight I'm gonna play catch-up (I like that better than ketchup, which one is Heinze?).

Follow ups will be on the folk fest, the Point Pleasant Boat show, the Independence Seaport Museums wooden boat festival AND the Homebrew Club's visitor Ben Potts!

I hope to see you tonight!

-Sean

Where Have I Been?, you ask.

2011-10-13T11:10:00.000-07:00

Well well, lots to tell.

Mostly I have been online with the lovely Miss Chanel McDannell planning our wedding in New Hampshire. It's funny when something "clicks" because it makes focusing on your life a little more unimportant.

I'd like to catch up on the boat show that I went to last weekend AND on the brew club meeting that we had last night with guest speaker Ben Potts the new head brewer at Dogfish Head brewery. But first, I gotta make this known about a girl that I once dated a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

I dated Chanel in college in an undisclosed year many moons ago. We had fun together. Much fun together. I cared for her and she cared for me. Somehow our paths diverged unexplainedly. There was no animosity. No pain. Just excellent memories. If there were any causes of the divergence, they were mine. We make mistakes. It happens. She on the otherhand is most compassionate and exceptionally positive not remembering my transgressions, or just too nice say and smart enough not to give them much attention because truthfully, I'm kind of simple.

So we have been catching up. And catching up. And catching up. She's awesome. I can't say much more than that because "awesome" says it all. One minor hitch is that she is in New Hampshire. Hmmm what to do? We are going to do what we have to do to get to where we want to be. There may be a long transition period where we are apart and having a long-distance relationship which will be difficult for both of us in many respects. It is going to work, that is all we know! It's cool. I have never felt like this before. It's new, challenging and intriguing. What more can you ask for?

The Philadelphia Folk Festival, my pics...

2011-08-24T15:03:00.000-07:00

My introduction to the Philly Folk Fest:

In need of a vacation, I had not the money to go surfing with Corky Carroll at his paradise resort in southern Mexico and was looking for something to ''get me out of the city". I was listening to WXPN and they were chatting up the folk fest and I remember my uncle telling me how fun it was in the late 60's early 70's and I even knew a few people who still go so I got on the horn and talked to my buddy's brother Joe who is a volunteer there and I am so glad that I did! I don't think I would have survived without his advice. I'm pretty industrious at times but from 6AM when I drove through Harleysville on my way to Schwenksville the confusion started. Well actually the makeshift roadsigns were actually spot on and really helpful, just that everyone and everything else was not from the time that I pulled up to the main gate, or "Point". And not to bust their balls or anything, I mean the whole shebang is run by volunteers on a shoestring budget so there is going to be communication breakdowns. No worries, it all worked out really well and I made some really good friends. Hopefully they will read this and shoot me some of the awesome pics that they had taken of all of us so I can introduce you to them.

Thursday, 6AM, Schwenksville: On a tip from my buddy Joe I got there early. The ride was dark and rainy and my windshield wipers on Moby were streaking making sign reading just a bit tougher for a 40 something with waning eyesight. I drive straight up to the "Point" or main gate without a hitch (I took that off Moby so I didn't bust my shins on the monstrous piece of metal in the center of Moby's bumper. That was a play at humor. Let me know if it worked or not). But I really did remove the hitch on my truck, just so you know, because it will devastate a naked shin. I ask what the ins and outs of this waiting to get into the show thing was and they had no clue. So I drove up to the next gate, same deal, completely oblivious to knowledge of such questions of Life, the Universe, and Everything. One girl does tell me of a staging area for incoming camper traffic up the road so I head that way, the gates are closed so I park in front of them. After a few hours I see people at the entrance to the staging area and think they are letting people in. NOPE. Just volunteer firemen to run the staging area, so I go back to parking in what later will be the exit to the staging area and shoot the sh!t with a couple of the volunteer fireman for a while and eventually they send me on my way to go park in the local firehouse. { HINT #1 } If you get there early, park there. You will know where it is because they send everyone early on this loop to keep driving around until they open that area. Well, it was still raining hard and I found the firehouse while the rain eventually faded.

9:50 AM Thursday: Moby roars and we get on our way...into traffic. LOG JAM! It was now the waiting game to get into the staging area for campers. 45 minutes it took to get into the staging area and then another 45 to get into the camp.

11:15 AM Thursday: I start packing up my wheelbarrow {HINT #2} a wheelbarrow or other sort of cart is MOST important because you have to hoof all your gear by foot to your hopefully available campspot...Thanks once again Joe for this awesome tip. But of course, I do this wrong and try to get into the camp without getting my bracelet first, but of course, they don't know where to send me to get one! LOL OK. Industrious Sean listens to other campers making fun of people like me and I eventually hoof my crap up to the main gate in the swelter of heat and humidity created by the sun and the rain. {HINT #3} Bring one of those sun shade things! There is NO shade to be had, you will need one for over your camping spot and tent too if you can wing it because the sun is going to wake your hung over butt up in the AM by 8AM!!!

So I get my spot, one of the last ones in the area I might add, and all of a sudden the area is jammed up with hopeful campers. My tent is a little out of line as I was hoping to have some space around the tent, but I was taking up space for others and that is how I met Paul, Warren (Bandana Santa as he will later be referred to by some would be partyers), Thom and Lori. I moved my tent a few feet for them and Voila!! they were able to fit their tents in too! So were were right on the painted line in which you weren't allowed to camp any closer, we had a view of the parking lot, but most important, we had space AND a view of the lightning storms that rolled over camp just after everyone got set up! The weather was awesome!

Well, we were all set up. I made a bite to eat, the only time that I would have to cook thanks to the gracious hospitality of my neighbors, a story that I will soon get to. Red beans and rice with some canned organic chicken. Oh, yeah, peas too! YUM!

Things have mellowed out, camp was set up, my belly full so I walked around to check out what is going on the day before and I landed some good pre-party and pre-muddy pics of the local campers and musicians:
I think this was a group of thespians. I have no idea, I never saw them do anything, not because they didn't do anything, but it's just that there is SO much going on, it is difficult to see it all. {HINT #4} The party starts well after midnight and all the stage shows, and on Sunday it didn't start until 2:30 AM and there is MUCH to see and do!

I was keeping my eyes out for cool tie dye ideas, this was an excellent home made tie dye! There were sooo many good tie dyes that I felt inferior. I recently gave tie dying a go and messed up the chemistry some how. I'll figure it out the next time someone gives me a lot of free t shirts. LOL

A lot of people came in light camping. My buddy Joe the volunteer has pictures and video of people racing to get in the gates with all their gear flailing and falling down getting trampled just to get a good spot. Crazy.

The PHiladelphia Jug Band. You gotta look these guys up. They aren't playing here at the time, but they were later that evening. This mostly looks like family and friends, but the band has banjos, geetar, hammer dolcimer (I think that is what it was, it was described as the precursor to the piano that the Knights Templar brought back to Europe and invented piano keys instead of the the drumstick type hammers they used to use playing it, losing some of the flexibility of the hammers that keyed pianos just cannot reproduce), jews harp, Jug (of course), and a fellow who played a saw blade with a violin bow! Great stuff! I have to look them up online and see if i can find some tunes!

This was the Pig Fockers encampment. They seemed to be playing Beatles type tunes most of the time when I would walk by and stop for a listen. This is still Thursday so they weren't playing yet, but later that night....

Bottom Feeders had one wicked flag up! Me loves catfish!

Another encampment with a cool tie dye. I think they were playing music as well. Who wasn't? Me! LOL

So that was the scene Thursday afternoon before all the mud, before all the partying. I went back to camp, then came the rain!

6:30 PM Thursday: A storm is a brewin'! To the southwest we all back at camp could see it. It came on us fast like they would for the rest of the event. Next door Warren had gone home and Paul was there by himself. I didn't think much about the other camps, I just wanted to keep my stuff dry so I moved everything into my tent. I love my tent. Thank you Tammie Painter for giving me the impulse to buy that tent so many years ago because it's really good in heavy weather. The storm hits, first the cooling winds, then they get stronger and are accompanied by large raindrops and mega lightning bolts which indicated to me that it was high time to get inside my tent with my chair, my beer, etc... What I didn't know is that Paul was outside the whole time holding his sun shade down from blowing away in the lightning blasts! I was very comfy inside.

After an hour it passed and my new friends and I sat and watched the lightning blast away at Philadelphia to the east. It was nature's light show! I did a tour of the campsites again on my way to the show on the campground stage, which was lame. A young fellow tried picking me up. That was different. I knew his game, I wasn't down. He walked off, I listened to the music until it went over. It was Funk and it was like taking medicine when I was younger. I walked around camp and some people were jamming, but I was kind of tired and then my buddy Joe calls and says to take a nap and come back out around 2AM. I woke up and 4:30AM and thought it was too late and had no intention of going out. I should have, it was party central!

I went to bed around 2:30 AM just after this, what looked to me to be a flying burning paper bag floated over the encampment from one end to another about 300 feet in the air! There were 3 that night! They were some Japanese flying candelabras or something. I didn't think anyone would believe me the next day so I took a picture. They didn't really believe me until Friday night!

The next morning I awoke to cursing of the heat of the sun at 8AM! Hence the need for a shade canopy, so you can get some sleep! LOL

So that was my first day at the Fest. It was very wordy, but for good reason. The rest of the event was just that, event after event after event and I will have to give that a thorough going over on my next post. Maybe, I will get some pics from the others to comment on as well.

more to come....

Laminating the Hull

2011-08-15T16:14:00.000-07:00

For a good portion of the summer it was too hot and humid to do any fiberglassing because of the finicky nature of epoxy and the shop isn't climate controlled, but I bet we could have hopped on this if we had to. I've been reading up on the topic and you can pretty much epoxy in most conditions. I've just been scared since the catastrophe that happened to the Wormhole fiberglassing her. We had a span of good weather for about three days last week and took advantage of them. There were some disappointments with some discoloration of the wood and we really can't track down the cause. It's a streaking and a lightening of color from one epoxied section to the next, possibly due to the epoxy aging in the cup even though it is still workable. The use of laquer thinner may have prevented that, or may have hastened it, I'm not sure. Making a fresh batch of epoxy for every section may have prevented it as well. Like I said, we aren't sure. It's not overly noticeable and when the varnish gets on there it will hopefully be even less noticeable. Either way, we stuck to our guns and got it done. Perhaps we can get her in the Philly wooden boat show this fall (OCT. 8).

She has since been sanded down again and is getting ready for fiberglass tape down the keel and stems for structure. Basically we laid out the glass and painted on the epoxy to laminate the board by wetting out the glass with the brush, we then squeegeed off the exess epoxy so the glass didn't float in any epoxy puddles creating waves that might get sanded off and create a weak spot in the glass if it gets sanded through. That Lam coat leaves air pockets in the weave below the glass and above it so the next coat (which we did in two hours while the first coat was still curing to have that chemical bond between layers) fills in those gaps, and is called the fill coat. The next coat (also done in less than 2 hours) plops a layer on top of the glass and can be sanded (if need be) without sanding into the glass itself. We had some lumpy spots and dry spots so we even did a fourth (Hot coat) really thin within the two hour time frame again. Then the next day we sanded with the longboard and 100 grit paper. It needs more sanding before we get to the fiberglass tape runner and then another full coat of epoxy. There are probably a half dozen different ways to approach what we did and we will figure out what works best for us along the way.

Pretty cool bucket sculpture. Look at that color of the wood on that boat! NICE!

Hah! You get to see what it looks like right side up!

My dad is pretty proud of the boat. We haven't come up with a name yet. I was tossing around the idea of Kindred Spirit. Kinda too pretentious maybe.

And here are some of the other fruits of summers labor! Those feckin tomatoes are incredible!!!

Toms River ACBS Wooden Boat Festival July16, 2011

2011-07-21T08:47:00.000-07:00

So like not only did I win once by getting a prize for my surfboards, but I win twice because I found out how to post more than one picture on here (took me long enough)! I was completely surprised at getting an Honorable Mention for the surfboards, my Pop didn't have the camera ready so no pics of me actually being handed the plaque. Either way, WIN!

The stand sans Nulls. My dad was off on walkabout and I just took an early morning pic of where we were located which was kind of off the beaten path, but we had a good bit of shade and were more than happy with the hundreds of people that we talked to!!

We got there around 8AM and the family boat building class was already in full swing. A well known local fella Timo was running this one and I had the chance to talk with some of the students and they were really enjoying themselves and all looking forward to getting their little rowboats in the water next week! It is a 7 or 8 hour class on building then they just paint the boats at a later date and voila! Timo, I apologize for not remembering your last name, it's only the tenth time I have met you!

George Kerr from Sedge Island Skiffs and his beautiful Melonseed duck hunting sailboat with his own retractable dagger board design! George is a great guy and his boat is awesome you should look him up! He also does repairs and restorations. He is in Toms River #732-618-4014

He is also a fellow homebrewer and I hope to get together to taste some of his grog!

Liberte' !!!

My favorite ship! This motorsailer is my dream boat!!!!

Check me out all smiling and such. even better check out the rocker difference of my two boards!

All in all, this turned out to be a very nice surprise and my dad and I are soooo glad that we took the time to come to this show! The amount of boats there was less than last year and they really need your support to keep the show alive so please, if you are a wooden boat owner, take your baby down to Toms River next year! I will! I might actually have 4 entries for next year if we finish restoring the Peterborough racing canoe in time! See you there!

Mystic's Boat Show, part two, part two. LOL

2011-07-21T08:43:00.001-07:00

The last pic from the show that I have. I wanted to note the beautiful woodwork around the cabin. There was talent in steaming that wood and not having the knots pop on them! Gorgeous! I'm not sure of the process of doing that, but I can guarantee that it wasn't easy! NICE!

Mystic's Boat Show, part two

2011-07-21T08:30:00.001-07:00

Only one thing stinks about being in the show as opposed to going to the show is that you don't get enough time to walk around and enjoy the entire show!

I did get to leave the stand and walk around a bit with my father, but not as much as I wanted. Nor did we get a chance to hop a ride on this steamship! We also wanted to go to the sub museum, take a sailing trip and eat more ice cream, but we did manage to take in a few of the sites as well as have an adventure in weather on the way there! We met a ton of cool people, it was a great time!

Here is Phoebe, one of my favorites at the show, perfect size!

I don't know the name of this beauty, but she was worthy of a photo for sure!!!!

A beautiful ketch rigged boat out enjoying the incredible weather, not much wind, but enough.

Does anyone know what this hull is designed for? Just curious.

Well, only 5 photos can be posted at a time for me. I have to look into a photo expansion program that allows me to load 6 into each of the 5 slots allowed. Not sure how to go about that.

70point8percent.blogspot.com

2011-07-21T08:15:00.000-07:00

Hey, I've taken another interlude and I'm going to plug Thomas Armstrong's above blog for his excellent photography skills and commentary on the events of Mystic Seaport's Woodenboat Festival! Here are the two pics that he took of my boards.

This first one is the fin done by Greenlight Surf Supply's Brian Gagliana. Excellent work Bri! It's made of renewable bamboo! Brian's wife has a clothing line which is based solely on bamboo fabrics. I believe it is called Barefoot.

Please pay no attention to that beautiful Adirondack Guide boat behind my two lovely surfboards! LOL That fella built a guide boat that I swear could fetch a million dollars! It is absolutely perfect in every way! So make sure you check out Tom's blog for all the greatest pics from the Mystic boat show and whatnot. Come to my blog for the details on all the best parties in Mystic. LOL

Maritime Merriments in Mystic, from Menhaden to Morgan part. 1

2011-06-27T16:48:00.000-07:00

Since my father was a little kid, he's been going to Mystic to see the square riggers, but life happened (four times in the form of four sons) and he didn't get to see the tall ships as often as he liked. We've been trying to make up for lost time and you can see the smile on his face in this picture as we are about to depart early Thursday morning for what was going to be a weekend of fun and adventure!

I love blogging about this sort of thing, but there is one tiny downfall in that I can only upload 5 pictures to each blog, so I chose five pictures from that of which my father took that give a general feel for the show and then in the later parts of the Mystic blog will be just tidbits from here and there along the way. Unfortunately we did not shoot any of the other folks entries in the "I built it Myself" section of the show, the one we were in. I don't know what we were thinking. I suppose that we were too busy to understand that we were part of, in my opinion, the heart of the show. Sure the larger yachts and sailing vessels are magnificent in every way, craftsmanship, ingenuity and beauty with countless hours of blood, sweat and tears were poured into them but there is something different to the hobbyist who is doing it out of fun, or "therapy" as many of my neighbors in this section describe it. It's a minute difference, really, but significant. I sound like a politician. Ha ha ha. Truthfully, I can't put a finger on it. But lets get to the meat of the story....

I had bought the tickets for our room at the Olympic Best Western about a month ago with the idea that we might be finished the canoe and bring it along to the show in some capacity. Well as the days passed and we knew that it wasn't going to be, we abandoned the idea of bringing anything with us. I have these two wooden surfboards that I had made that are in different stages of finishing (as I find the finish on a wood craft to be daunting) and wasn't real sure if I even wanted to bring them. Two massive heat waves followed by mega humid days put the kibosh on any varnishing ideas and to tell the truth I wasn't keen on more varnishing since getting it right was eluding my attempts. I gave up on the idea of bringing them and decided to just hit the show for one day and the other day go to the submarine museum. My Dad was totally down with this plan because he injured his knee while working on the canoe really hard one day and wanted to take it easy. But then it hit both of us at the same time to bring the surfboards and show them off, what the heck! He could just sit there with ice on his knee while I talked to interested visitors. So a scramble ensued to get the boards ready. The Wormhole surfboard is finished with an epoxy that is supposed to be UV protected, but it's not and I wanted to get that done somehow, but time was running out and I had no ideas or time to ship any products to my house let alone the money to buy it with, so I just decided to polish it as best I could. My best was not good enough. I was wet sanding and building a huge milky latte froth up (it looked quite tasty honestly) and couldn't get out the scratches. I had wet sanded for 30 years, but never more than to a 400 grit shine because most of my polyester surfboards were fine with 400, they looked great! But this finish did not. My uncle dropped by the shop like he does at various times and usually catches me at some stage of working and I am glad that he caught me then because he set me straight with how to use wet dry paper with just enough time for me to finish the night before the show. Don't make a latte with the material!!!!! Use a ton of water and rinse it often. This method extended the life of my sand paper by about 20 minutes as well. Thanks Uncle Rich! Where were you 30 years ago? ha ha ha... The Rainstick, my other surfboard is a varnished one. It's more like a varnish experiment in progress. I've been having trouble getting one complete side of the board done due to the varnish pulling too soon. I actually got pretty good at doing sections of the board, but you can still see the brush marks and was at an impasse so I decided not even to attempt another coat until I learned a little more about it. So I learned a little about it this weekend! Thank you Woodenboat Show!!! Well I got the boards ready, washed out my board bag which was encrusted in wax and sand and sat back and had a few home brewed beers as I made a few tie dye shirts to wear to the show. I hadn't tie dyed in 20 years and something was amiss with that endeavor as well, but the shirts were given to me for free, so it was a neat experiment. I plan on delving back into that hobby as I was pretty good at it at one time and I really like doing them! Besides, it's a good way to enjoy a home made porter! Speaking of which, Sailor Jerry is calling my name. BRB... Oh that's tasty!

In the above picture we see an unsuspecting Cork Null with a huge smile on his face. I greet him similarly as well as we pack the car. Indeed I looked at the weather last night and gleaned that there was a 30% chance of precipitation in Mystic and everywhere along the route to Mystic so, I packed a long sleeve turtleneck shirt to deal with any weather eventualities. I laugh as I write this as the prediction for precipitation was only 30% in reality 75% of our trip was in complete and utter deluge keeping the speed of travel on our route to about 20 MPH. We took the Pallisades PKWY for the scenery, we got torrential rain! I have these little air valves on the surfboards that I keep open when travelling, etc... basically all the time they are out of the water, well I had forgotten about them, but when it started with the deluge it finally dawned on me that they were open. YIKES! That could be problematic in a worst case scenario, but no water entered the boards, and probably wouldn't have even if I didn't close the valves. So when were weren't dodging a billion habanero sized raindrops, mudslides, rock slides and hydroplane danger zones, the other 25% of the time we were stuck in gridlock on route 95. My poor Dad had to white knuckle it the whole way while the raindrops lulled me to sleep. We were on the road for about 8 hours! Luckily it gave me time to call the good people at Woodenboat Magazine and find a spot to put my boards! A special thanks goes out to Sandra Turner, Patty Hutchinson and Ray Clark for coordinating with each other and getting me settled! Thanks so much guys, with my dad's hurt knee we were unsure for the last week leading up to the show that we were even going to go. Wednesday night I was about to cancel the hotel room as my Dad's knee looked pretty bad! You guys made it happen for us, thanks for letting us participate in one of the coolest events that we have ever been to!

Well, it all payed off. We got to our hotel, lugged the surfboards inside, got showered up and headed off to the Harp and the Hound which if I were to have a pub, this is how I would do it. We go there every year and the owner John has a smile for us and cold pints of Smithwicks. The menu is perfect for a publican. Shepherds pie or bangers and mash. Simple and elegant! It is a nice quite place to have 3 pints or more on a Thursday night, shoot the shit with Tim Quick from the museum and just chill. A great place. I look forward to it every year. With a good buzz and a light sprinkle in the cool misty air we headed out for a little walk around Mystic. The shops are mostly closed, we didn't care, we head to the waterfront areas and look at the boats, dream about sailing and just living on board for the rest of our lives and then head back to the room a little clearer minded from the walk in the fresh air.

Thursday morning found us a little too early around 7:30. I had no interest in getting up but I can't sleep knowing how amped my Dad is about starting his day and getting to the show so he does his morning thing, I do mine, and we go eat our free hot brekkie at the hotel. I will tell you, a nice hot breakfast sure does wonders!

We get to the show a little late which worked in our favor since most everyone was already unpacked and we had a nice area to unpack our gear at the vendors gate. Having small surfboards I think we were able to get away with a little more than those with the larger craft which was kind of cool, but I didn't want to hold anyone up so I went into high gear to get our spot set up and was a little rough around the edges in dealing with my Dad. He just wants to mellow and have a good time and I was in "gotta get there" mode. But it's like water and a ducks feathers with my dad. It's all good. We got settled in amoungst a great group of people with some really fantastic boats and embarked on a truly memorable time surrounded by good people and good stories! My dad loves telling stories and I like hearing them! Some I have never heard before like the time he sprung one on me on how he built a model nuclear reactor in the sixties at a R&D job that he had with the Franklin Institute! NO. WAY!!!!!

I tell ya, we were so busy for the three days that we didn't really have the time to fully experience the show. We would go for walks at separate times, sometimes together and leave the photo book that I had documenting the construction process with the surfboards, which really was pretty helpful in explaining the process. I'm glad that we chose to make that! I mean the blog is really cool and helpful, but at the show, photos are where its at and it helps to have them in good order!

Friday's show was a blast! It was mellow and all of us had time to bond and tell stories. The weather was overcast and cool which reminded me of how much I miss Oregon because I truly like that weather. The day went off without a hitch and later that night we hit the Voodoo Grill for some of thee best Cajun food I have ever eaten. The place isn't large, but the atmosphere is. The building it is in is a former manufacturing complex I bet built in red brick and it is perfectly preserved. It has a red brick interior which I enjoy, a small bar, which I also enjoy, about 15 or so tables and a a small outside area. Number one on the menu, always consider the chef's specialty even if you can bank on one of your favorites being good. In this case my theory paid off when I got the Shrimp and Mudbug etouffee. My dad got the tried and true pulled pork. He then died and went to heaven. Much merriment ensued. Sailor Jerry was passed around. A one man band deserted by his fellow band members played You Don't Know How it Feels by Tom Petty and a cool buzz followed once again. Again it was followed by the walk around town to ogle all the nice boats moored and at dock. I may have shed a tear a few times here and there in a dark part of a dock somewhere as Sailor Jerry built up in my bladder. You can take the kid out of Philly, but not the Philly out of the kid. Meh, it was raining anyway.

Saturday! Now Saturday was one heck of a busy day at the show! Sunday heard many complaints of my neighbors losing their voice by the end of Saturday. Wow, I don't know what the turnout of the show was, but we sure were busy! OMG we met some really cool people from all over the world! It was just amazing! I never knew how many surfers there were. It seems like most of the sailors were surfers. I'd have to say that meeting Glenn Gordinier from the museum was the highlight of the weekend. That guy is the word cool. It just so happens that we both surfed the same spots in Jersey and some in Oregon and know some of the same cats some that have passed on with much regret. Man I could have went on and on about how cool George from Surfers Supplies in OC, NJ was. That guy would leave surfwax out on his shops doorstep for my brother and I because we needed it well before the store opened. I was coming to him for my polyester resin and advice in 1985. Man, those were the days of surfing for me. It wasn't crowded yet. Ocean City was more so than Atlantic City and my brother Keith and I soon found ourselves there accidentally as we missed our exit on the AC expressway in the middle of a blizzard and never went back to Ocean City. AC was golden! Glenn brought all those memories back. He's got a book called Cold Water Surf Stories or something of the like soon. Be sure to catch that book, it's guaranteed a good read! The events of Saturday night were more subdued. I found myself at Zhang's with my father. Zhang's is next to Voodoo Grill and much more mellower. I fell in love with the Vietnamese waitress, ahhhhhh such beauty, and I fell in love with the Crispy Spicy Tuna Rolls that were on special. OMG! OMG! OK, I have sushi like 4 times a year maybe??....???? But I tell ya, a california roll battered in tempura, topped with tuna paste, salmon eggs and that special hot sauce is something to cherish. Add a nice wad of wasabi to the mix and you will not have a better plate of sushi! It was the perfect combination for me! All my favorites in one bite! That is a must have! I was off my game though. The rum punch did me in and I didn't make my move on the waitress. I tell ya, if there weren't the beauty of Connecticut, the ocean, the ocean air, the majestic boats and ships, the friendly nature of the locals and the fresh air I would still want to marry her and move to Mystic! I never listen to rule number one: never fall in love with a waitress or bartender! After that we went to the Harp and the Hound for a round and I was regretting leaving Zhang's the whole time!

Sunday was mellow again at the show. Nothing notably stressful happened. Chewed the fat with John Allegra again. He's the livery guy who runs the horse and buggy rides. He is a truly genuine guy. His sense of humor is reminiscent of a Philadelphian in some ways so he was easy to get along with. He got a kick out of our father and son duo like so many other people did I think. He was just another one of the people that made our stay at the show fly by too fast. And it did. I wish we had more time!

The real meat of the show for us was the exhibit that we were in. But we did manage to get out and see some of the sights and chat it up with the other exhibitors.
Some of the things that caught my dads eye behind the camera were sights like the massive hull of the whaleship Charles Morgan. You really don't get the magnitude of the hull and of the project from this picture but just take a look a the size of the guy next to the lift and you might get an idea. You really have to see it up close. It's HUGE! The steambox for the planks is like 40 feet long! I tell ya, those bow planks must be a bugger to replace! The curve in them is unimaginable!

Here is an Indonesian fishing vessel built recently by a local tribe there and adorned in all the traditional art. It's pretty cool to see the similarities of design that developed between cultures so far from each other!

Got Tillers? Some of the real education at the museum is in the teaching of sailing to younger students. I'd say that they have a few boats for a few students wouldn't you? It's just a cool picture and my dad saw it. He knows what he's doing that guy.

This pic is what it's all about. Kids are getting out there and getting involved in something that is sometimes completely alien to what they have lived and learned and it really opens their eyes to a future that they never thought possible. Nature has a way of doing that when we are exposed to her. And what better way to be exposed to nature than on a beautifully crafted piece of art that glides across a beautifully crafted body of water?

Mystic, Conn. Woodenboat 20th Anniversary show

2011-06-26T16:37:00.000-07:00

OMG, I just got home from the show and me arse be draggin, but my Dad and I had such a great time and met so many cool folks and I learned sooooooo much!

I will update you all further on the adventures!

-Sean

Stems, very woody!

2011-06-20T18:59:00.000-07:00

Alright! June 20, 2001 already! Time freakin' flies! In 3 days my Pop and I will be in Mystic, Conn. at the biggest wooden boat show on the East coast! We will just be shopping around, and passing out business cards for myself. I'm gonna bring one of my boards along and see if anyone is interested in my work. So I have been out in the shop polishing "The Wormhole" for the show so she looks pretty, only to sand her again later and spray varnish her for the next show! LOL I'm never happy! That blush in the epoxy is pissing me off! All that work and it's cloudy. LOL

Okee Doke, well, while Im upstairs, my dad is downstairs putting the stems in. Here he's got the stem on the vice and he is planing the stem to a 3/8" wide point that will eventually be covered with 1/4 round brass strip.

Here he is fitting the stem in place, we made a few few errors that will cost us some points on looks by overplaning the flats for the stems. We sort of did it while we were still planking the hull to make room for the newest glued planks. Oh, well, lesson learned. Basically we filled the gap with epoxy and sawdust, that was too dark, but alas, it will look OK I'm sure.

Using a 3/4 rounded chisel so the stem has a rounded end entering the hull. Looks kind of nice. We are a little further along now than in this post, and it is starting to look pretty nice.

So, what we did is we epoxied them in place once we got the surfaces to match as best we could. We drilled pilot holes before we epoxied them so that we could screw them down tight with a round head screw dipped in wax, as to not break off in the tough oak. We put a layer of epoxy on and let the end grain of the strips soak it up, then added a layer of epoxy with the sawdust filler in it, screwed it into place and let it dry for over 24 hours. We then removed the screws, well, my dad did all this actually, and bored out the holes with 1/4" (?) drill. We cut bungs from a 1/4" maple dowel rod and tapped them in (pre-glued of course) with a hammer. We tried to match the grain direction for looks, it didn't work because the grain was masked by the saw blade marks, but it doesn't matter, it's getting covered over with brass. If we weren't using the brass we would have made bungs with oak and done it correctly. Since this step, the stems have been sanded down roughly and are looking really nice!

A nice pic of the roughly sanded hull. Looking good!!!!

On a Boat!!!

2011-06-01T20:27:00.001-07:00

Dat's right! The strap clamps are off and Robin and I admire it's asymmetrical shape which is really noticeable in this pic! Incredible! I love it!

We are all so happy that the "Football" is looking great!

Stern view...

NO rest for the weary on a hot day in the shop! Robin and I waste no time before we dig in to planing the high spots! And dig in we did! The grains were all over the place!

We found that planing on an angle across the planks was one method that worked really well. But alas doing this also leaves hills and valleys, but just not the length of the canoe. Next up: Sanding Galore!!!!

One Step Closer!!!!!! Hell Yes!

2011-06-01T20:05:00.000-07:00

Do you see those three strips already glued together? One of the steps along in the process of stripping this side of the football was half way through, about the 6th strip in, you stop and make up the last piece (shown here) from the last three strips that are going to make up the football in the center. They are glued in place, 3 at a time but not glued to the 6th strip, just glued together so that they hold the curve of the football as it is essentially the same at strip 6 as it is at strip 11 (as these strips are strip 12, 13, and 14). The strips did not hold their shape perfectly as the glue is not rigid and you don't want to just assume that the curve will be perfect when determining your centerline on the piece. Since the curve did not hold, it wasn't the same as the previously laid strips, so the centerline could NOT be drawn as straight. So in this instance you lay the piece next to the football hole (what I was calling the smile).
Laying the piece lined up with the intersection points as best you can make marks every two inches or so in the same place on the cove of the piece and top of the previously laid strip. You then measure the distance from the previoulsly laid strip to the centerline cut on the upper lip of the smile and then take the compass and mark the distance on the corresponding mark from the cove of the piece. Do that at every mark.

After you have measured each and every mark, you connect the dots and you have your centerline! Notice that it is slightly curved? Now you plane down to the line very carefully leaving an 1/8" along it, or more if you are escared like me. Basically we fit one end, tweeking it along the way by planing it down carefully in like 8" sections until we had it planed the whole way and snapped it into place, eventually with glue!

Removing the top cove with this device that my dad made really made fitting the piece into place much much easier and allowed the cut piece of cove to remain intact so that it could be glued back in when the piece was glued in. It worked really well and the gap that would have been there at the cove top is filled! Awesome!! He effin made that shiznit!!!

Great work Cork!!!!!!!!

A Tight Squeeze

2011-06-01T19:58:00.000-07:00

I used to dig that band Squeeze! TMI Sean.

So, welcome to the last plank on the boat before the final stage of the football is complete. This is the last time that we use and clamps and wedges, other than the strap clamps for the last piece. As you can see, there isn't much room to work and it was pretty tough getting clamps in the space to work, but we managed alright!

Looking like a boat more and more!

Interns and Diversions!

2011-06-01T19:46:00.001-07:00

This is Robin! Robin is a wood sculpture student at Moore College of Art and stoked to be doing some woodworking over her busy summer. She's been doing lots of difficult work in adverse conditions here at the shop. The last few times out there have been really hot and humid. Between balancing a full time job, helping her Mom move and a shore house she still finds time to make it into the shop and build stuff! Here she is on "The Saw of Digit Death" making the parts for these awesome cradles for when the canoe comes off of the strongback and inside work needs to be done!
Check them out! Awesome cradles made entirely by an intern! Thanks sooooo much for your help Robin!

Night at the IMPROV

2011-06-01T19:29:00.001-07:00

SHIMS! The solution to our dilemna! The side of the football that we were working on was dropped down an 1/8" lower on the gunwhale than the other side so the points on the strips on this side at the bow were extending 1.5" longer than the strips on the centerline cut side. So in order to match the strip points up my dad fashioned shims of matching color from the cut excess of the strip about 12 inches long. Starting with a piece of strip 16" long or longer he measured 12" down and 3/8" in and penciled in the angle line. The new shim was planed with the plane upside down in a vise and drawn across the blade.

You can see here how the shim both extends the point of the strip while making it wider and pushing the point of the strip up to meet the opposing point. The parts are ready glued.

The strip now tortured into place and clamped and strapped into place.

Here you can make out that we had to alternate this shim method every other strip. We made 4 or 5 shimmed strips before the final shaped piece went into place.
In some spots we were able to put some wedges in between the centerline and the cove of the strip pushing it tight into place.

Stripping the second side of the Football

2011-06-01T18:49:00.001-07:00

Well, since this is going to take a while and is cutting into my "netflix time" I'm going to enjoy one of my nice cold Belgian Snow homebrews. OMG, soooo many people like this one! Once again, I got the recipe from George at Homesweet Homebrew and tweaked it a little. YUM! And, once again, I have Linton Kewesi Johnson on the CD player. Mellow. We got some ketchin up to do! Soon come!

Here is the jig me Da and myself made to hold the strips as we planed them down. Now I didn't take a picture of how we got the line or angle to cut to. We did this in two ways, one by bevel gauge (shown in next picture next to the jig) which proved to be mostly a double check as the angle from the laid strips to the centerline cut changes slightly as you move the gauge away from the intersection of the two. The way most accurate for us was to place the strip bead into the cove of the previous strip as best we could and mark the intersections of the top of the strip with the centerline and the intersection point of the previous strip and the centerline thus giving us our desired angle and fit. The strip was then tweeked several times to fit into the intersection point. Then we drew a line midway down the strip from the strip to the previously laid strip. This line guided us in letting us know how much wood we need to remove from the opposite end, when the opposite was finished tweeking, the mark should line up. With that first end still in place, we mark the intersection of the centerline and the top of the strip and again at the point, then repeat the process tweeking it into place.

Dad's hands were really efficient at planing! He's really good! I messed one plank up in the process eventually and the colors don't match real well. Oh well. A glitch in our process proved too complicated for me! LOL We will get to that later! *notice the bevel gauge at the bottom of the pic.

OK so the first football strip is in! The strips were numbered on both sides of the football previous to these steps so that the colors matched as best as we could. The flat faces of the points on either end are glued with an acid brush and the cove of the previously laid strip is filled and brushed with glue. One end is slid into the intersection point then the other side is slid into place in a process likened to "Torturing" the wood because there is a belly in the center of the strip as you try and slide the second point into place AND the strip is also curving with the shape of the football. Basically the wood is being tortured in many directions to get it into place. Then the same clamping method is used to hold the center of the strip and at the ends straps with little blocks pulled down on the points to keep them secure. Later as the boat gets wider and the points aren't located at an inner frame, some scrap wood was used that was the same width as the gunwhales or greater to keep the strap from pulling the gunwhales together and breaking.

The first strip of the football at the stern. Nice...

The first strip of the football at the bow. Nice, for now....

But later, because our gunwhales were off by 1/8" (one lower than the other on the internal frames) this point did NOT line up! The next strips on the football were going to be massively off and the football would look, well, not like a football... SO we had to improvise!

Freedom. Far From Finished!

2011-05-07T18:19:00.000-07:00

Okay, alright, time for me to grab a beer! I'm caught up on the posts! BRB... Man, it took me a room temperature bottle conditioned Grand Crux homebrew with an excellent head to realize that I had NO reggae on! WTF? On goes Linton Kewesi Johnson Dreadbeat and Blood. Great album!
So like in this pic I'm cutting away 1/2" from the centerline with a utility knife. In a few passes the cedar just peels away. Caution is recommended in this process. NEVER HAVE ANY HUMAN FLESH ON THE DOWNWARD STROKE OF THE BLADE.
Then my Pop used that centerline guide stencil that you see at his left hand to mark where the centerline is from on the form to the top of the canoe. There is a notch in the stencil to allow for the cedar planks to set in. Basically we just connected the dots with the straightedge and my chalk line was almost exact! We brushed that off and used a ball point pen to mark the centerline.

Then we rough chiseled out most of the wood to about an 1/8th of the centerline. After that I found that raising the wood up off of the forms with a few wedges as I went along with the hand plane worked great! ****NOTE go get yourself a LIE NIELSON low angle hand plane!!**** You will never touch that Stanley again. The Stanley is a great plane, don't get me wrong, but the LIE NIELSON will get you through the tough glued spots much easier just like a wood surfboard will get you through that chop and into the next section of the wave better, the Lie Nielson will do you right. I planed the wood to 92 degrees perpendicular to allow for the later planks to set in easier to the molds. I tell ya, this process may remove some skin off your knuckles and may be tiresome, you just gotta do it!!! I was taking many breaks to sharpen my tools! It will give you a break from the monotony with more monotony! LOL Sharpening sucks! Where are my interns?!?!?!?
My Pop just had is left eye done for cataracts. He sees excellent now! Looks like a nice straight line!

Whatcha think there POP?

Freedom Picture Gallery Hull Stripping Take TWO!

2011-05-07T18:01:00.000-07:00

Since the strips on this canoe run pretty much parallel to the waterline that would make the profile of the gunwales low and flat. This is pretty helpful to grab less wind on a windy lake or something. But the boat needs some sexiness to it so two strips are being glued to the gunwales at bow and stern to give her some more curves!

This pic gives a little better idea of the extra meat this lady will have to give her some curves. Basically we just faired a curved line from the tip of the stems to the third form back or so and cut on the line with a utility knife to get her curves. This wood is pretty soft and with three passes of the utility knife will shed her skin.

The last strips being glued in place. The last 14 strips we were able to glue on two at a time saving us some time. Each strip 1 thru 14 has an identical sister in color and length waiting to be shaped and placed in the other side.

Pretty cool pic of the centerline that I chalklined into place. This was really just for me to get a general idea of whether or not we planked the hull enough and really gives a good effect on the eye! Later my father will draw in the line using his neato centerline contraption, a straightedge and a clown to hold the straightedge (me).

One of our interns. Crazy kid actually likes working on boats. I will try and write, or have the interns write their own bios for the woodwatercrafts.com website!

Freedom Picture Gallery Hull Stripping

2011-05-07T17:38:00.001-07:00

Here are some pretty pictures that were taken just before the hull stripping started. A nice side view gives you the the general low profile shape of the canoe at the gunwales. It would be a good canoe in the wind because of this.

Pretty cool bottom view. You can get an idea of the matching strip colors on each side a little from this picture. The glue impairs it, but it will come out real nice after sanding and the epoxy coats!

Although this boat has a low profile and looks a little "rigid" in the above two views, this angle reflects it's semi traditional lines that it still has. This view also lets the viewer in on the asymmetry at the bow and stern stems a little. The bow is cutting the water and the stern is allowing it to flow away from the boat with ease.

Nice! You can see the Early 1900's Peterborough hanging up in the background. This boat was actually used by the previous owner to train for the famous 1936 Olympic Games where Jesse Owens destroyed Hitler's track and field team! Go Jesse! Anyway, the boat was left outside by one who wishes to remain nameless and is in a state of disrepair....

Let the hull stripping Begin!!!!!!!!

Canoe Clamping Contraptions Continued :-)

2011-05-07T17:10:00.000-07:00

Ha Ha! I just love to f@#k with alliteration. It's easy and cheap while making me sound smart!
Here we are still clamping to the stems and am using spring clamps to hold the strip to the form and a screw in the form with a wedge pressing the strip to the previous strip. The screw system was a great idea that we used up until the very last strips before we started the next process of stripping only half of the hull at a time, which we are currently engaged in.

Further along the space gets more confined and had to eventually switch to the PVC clamps that I made from 4" PVC and two small wood screws with a few washers. Some of these holes from the screws will actually not be seen as they will be covered up by the top oak stem. The holes that you will see will actually be very small and hopefully will fill in OK, not sure yet on that one.

(Tips on making PVC Clamps: get an eight foot length of 4" PVC and cut a multitude of two different width rings, 1/2" and 1". The 1 inchers will provide a stronger clamping strength than the halfers and the halfers will fit into tighter spaces and provide good clamping strength. Now slice each ring on band saw to make a closed "C" then on the drill press clamp that closed "C" onto a spinning 1/4" or bigger bit. This notch that you put on the clamping surface will be extremely handy in holding that clamp onto your piece, whatever it may be. No one tells you this, I had to learn it on my own. Last but definitely NOT least, if you have a deburring tool for plastics, use it around the entire edge of the ring either before you notch it or after, but this will take a long long arduous time to do, but OMG it will save your hands from all kinds of cuts and sores using these clamps. I found it to be a great relief deburring them!)
Here is a combination of PVC clamps being used, one to push the strip down on the previous strip and the other to press the strip to the stem. Those screws that we used on the previous strips were left in place and provided a perfect place to clamp from!
Bow Stem Section.

Same thing here, different view. Bow stem section.

ON this canoe the bow and stern stems are not symmetrical so the clamping arrangements are different. This is the
STERN stem section and you can see difference in clamping. The taper at this spot is more gradual.

Canoe Clamping Contraptions

2011-05-07T16:36:00.000-07:00

Ah let the ingenuity begin! Actually, this inventiveness started well over a month ago. I am backtracking to get us up to speed on the present status of Freedom. Here is a close up of the early system of stem clamping that we used. This picture was taken when the strips were just at the bottom of the main curve of the stem. The necessity for wedges from all directions becomes apparent with the two major curves the body of the canoe takes here. We really are "torturing" the strips into place!

Here is another picture depicting the same clamping procedure. The big C clamp is the foundation for yet another wedge pressing the strip tight onto the strip under it. It gets tricky and this is where the beginner like me is going to spend much of his time just coming up with ideas on how to press down on the glued strip.

Here are our L brackets being employed at the top of the curve. The L is clamped at the form and a wedge is pushed under it to press the strip onto the strip underneath it and a wider taped wedge is pushed alongside it to press the strip to the form. Pushing down on the strip too much could actually push the previous strips away from the form so we had to back off on making them "gorilla tight" and actually had to put a few nails or small screws in the previous strips to hold them to the forms as to not misshape the canoe.

Even higher along the stripping yet another clamp came in handy. It is a modified version of the one we read about in Canoecraft, by Ted Lundy (Bear Mountain's instructional manual). This actually clamped down in three places and came in quite handy! I think it was only useful for 3 strips and then we had to move on to the next series of clamps to be in my next post. Most importantly we learned that this clamp actually pressed down on the center of the stem really well. Look at the recurve in that top piece! Nice!

This pic gives you a better idea of the clamping pressures. The center one pressing the strip onto the previous strip and the two side ones pressing the strip onto the stem (two people are needed to press the jig onto the stips as the other tightens the C clamps to hold them in place. It was cumbersome, but served its purpose really well.

Redwood Boogies

2011-04-25T17:53:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm skipping ahead here, but I thought I would catch everyone up on where we are with the canoe just to whet your appetites. It's out of order in the scheme of building progression, but I wanted to get this out there. This is the boat as of this morning before my Dad and I eventually got 4 more strips on her. She is starting to look like a real pretty lady. Gluing these bottom strips isn't so bad. Some wedges here, a few screws in the forms there and all was well. It's even easier now that we are full on to the bottom. We eye up where the strips are going to cross the centerline and cut them off an inch or so over where they cross it. We can use those lengths of strip for the ones even more in the center. My Uncle Rich suggested we just make it a glass bottom canoe and market it towards the Floridian fisherman market. LOL It would be cool, I guess...
We got two strips on "The Pretty Lady", went to my Pops house and had leftover ham that I cooked on Easter yesterday and came back to do some planing of the Redwood for my next surfboard project. I bought 3/4 planks 12 foot long and my Pop split them in half. Well they weren't 3/4, they were closer to 5/8" but we still managed to get them to 1/4" with a few sawblade marks still in them, but overall, it worked out well.

232/1000's !!!!

7/1000's left to plane! Better flip that puppy over and do the unmilled side!

Unfortunately on the first pass we hit a stone embedded into the wood and nicked the blade! But it was to one side and we were able to get all 16 planks planed. I'm gonna have to sharpen those blades,,,,more like my Pop is gonna have to sharpen those blades! LOL, he can show me how.
The guy knows how to make the best of things! We had a long day of work and he's a trooper. I had to bust out the saw horses to lay the planks on while milling because they started to get so thin that they would sag and that raises or lowers the plank on the cutting blade eliminating a nice flat finish like we want.

8PM after 11 hours of working on boats, surfboards, air conditioners and the garden, Pop is still smiling. He's looking forward to a nice cool glass of Admiral Nelson when he gets home!

Wissinoming Brewing

2011-04-13T19:39:00.001-07:00

So like another hobby of mine is brewing beer. I love it. I would like to pursue it as a career eventually. I have been accepted to UC Davis into their brewers program, which is actually an accomplishment to me since I had to have a list of pre-requisites and they liked them! Getting money for tuition is going to be a challenge. If I can't get a loan, I can't go to school and it is back to the drawing board looking for other schools like the one in chicago or the one in Colorado, but still there is that money thing again.

OK, so one of my ideas was to get a website going to try and make connections, contacts, and maybe a little money. I bought the rights to both the names, Wissinoming Brewing and Be Green And Flow (wissinomingbrewing.com and begreenandflow.com) and would like to get something going.

I'm not sure if I should use either of these of if I should use both. I was wanting to combine the two, but that may dilute the purpose. If I do two websites, how do I proceed? Begreenandflow could be oriented towards educating people on how to do wood projects and WissBrau could be for homebrewing. But how to make a little cash off of either? TShirts? Keychains? Contests?

Any ideas are really appreciated! Even help setting the sites up is appreciated as it is no where as easy as I had originally hoped.

Shoot me your opinions!

Stay green! Stay cool!

Sean

Stripping for Freedom

2011-04-13T19:15:00.001-07:00

Alright, take it off! Actually, stripping this canoe is putting it on! Putting on cedar strip planks!
To the left here, you are seeing Pacific Redwood from Redding, California, those planks are actually for my next surfboard, a ten foot log designed by Grain Surfboards in York, Maine.

Here is the first cedar strip being attached to the forms on either side of the picture. The strip is running the entire length of the canoe and attached at what will actually be the gunnel, or "rub rail" of the canoe when upright. Planking is actually being done with the overall form of the canoe overturned.

At each form overtop of the first plank (strip) layed down, two more strips are placed atop it with glue in between each strip. In this process, the strips are layed down with a convex side [U] on top, and a convex side [0]down. The convex "u" is filled with glue the entire length and then the strip is pressed into place with the "L" shaped bracket clamped to the form and wedges pushing down on the plank (strip) from the top and the side.

Here is a better pic of the forms with the planks held in place with the L brackets and wedges, better pics to follow.

My Uncle Rich and my Dad watching the glue dry.

Boat Beginings

2011-04-13T18:34:00.000-07:00

The Freedom 17, an asymmetrical trekking canoe designed by Bear Mountain Boats is the project my Dad is taking on. The forms were given to he and I by Geoff McKonly. Thanks Geoff you saved us about 200 bucks! It's not exactly the boat that I wanted to do. I like Bear Mountains' "Bob Special" and my Pop I think wanted to do "the Hiawatha" or some other Native American inspired design, but hey, these forms were free and we are experimenting so no big deal! The project actually started 4 years ago when I moved back to Philly. It's been most of that time just organizing the shop, which isn't easy when many different people have their "stuff" in there. We have actually had the wood for the project close to 20 months now, but there are constant interferences and delays. But now we are neck deep into the project and I'm hoping that we can speed up the process to make this years' boat shows in time. I'd love to be able to bring a canoe and another surfboard to Mystic this year to show them off! Mystic is pretty cool although last year it seemed about 30% or more smaller than the previous years events. So my dad, Cork, and I are about 2/3's of the way through the planking which is probably about 1/4 of the way through the entire project. Maybe more. Sanding comes next and that should go pretty quick. Then it is on to epoxying, which may prove to be tough for a few reasons, one being the large surface to fiberglass and epoxy, the other being that the epoxy itself has been sitting on the shelf for two years and may be losing it's fluidity. I am not sure on that. It has not been opened, but it has been exposed to temperature extremes. Past experiences lead me to conclude that there is a good chance that it may not be as good as it should be. Let's cross our fingers.

One of the longest bits in this process was the beginning stage of setting up the strongback. The strongback is a frame that runs the length of the canoe in which all of the forms are attached to. And to the forms go the planks along them, the planks taking the desired shape of the individual canoe and being held together with Titebond 3 glue but not to the forms. This way the planked canoe can be lifted off of the forms before fiberglassing and epoxying.

That is called a strongback. It is made level and everything is squared off at 90 degree angles for the placement of the frames or forms that form the shape of the hull. The taught line on top helps line up the frames better. This is my dad's baby. He's really getting into it now. Setting up the strongback and the frames seemed to be the biggest pain in the azz so far.

Me Da just after we clamped up the steamed oak stems for the the bow and stern of the canoe. The bow and stern "stems" are made of oak because it is a really tough wood. The oak was cut into 1/4" thick strips and then piled on top of each other so they can steam better and faster than just a solid piece of oak. Also notice two of the forms on the strongback at the bottom of the photo.

Here you can make out the layers of the wood. This will actually be an inside AND outside stem for the bow of the canoe. The layers will be epoxied together to make two solid pieces out of these 6 or 8 layers. The inside stem are what the planks will be glued to and the outside stem will add protection to the bow and stern of the boat as well as give it a nice look from contrasting colors.

This is our makeshift steambox. A steel can sits atop my beer burner and the water inside is heated till it steams up into the PVC pipe inside which we have our oak strips to be bent. They sat in the steam for 15 to 20 minutes and were placed on the frame in the above picture and clamped into place. After letting them sit there for a day, they were removed and let to completely dry before they were epoxied together. The whole process up until they were epoxied took us about two weeks off and on, with the strongback and all combined. But to work straight through it was probably about 20 hours of work. Something to think about if you want to take on a project like this someday. Also keep in mind that you will have to procure all the tools as well if you don't have them, which is time consuming.......and money consuming! My recommendations, get them at a flea market if you can, then try ebay and craigslist. You most likely will find used tools that are of better quality than that of 80% of the new ones.

The next Boat Show 9/10/2010

2011-03-03T19:58:00.000-08:00

The next boat show was the next weekend. It was in Toms River, NJ on Sept. 10, 2010. It was a classic boat and classic car show and man did I ever try and pair up my boards with some of those Woodies! No bites though! In order to showcase the boards better and keep them from getting dinged up I stole a design from George Kerr at Sedge Island Skiffs (Gorgeous boats by the way check him out at sedgeislandskiffs@live.com) and built these racks from 3/4 plywood and some green flag material overtop pipe insulation.

The Rainstick was done in 2007 but I was never happy with the finish. Finally, I found Epiphanes Varnish and fell in love with it. The Rainstick got two coats before the show. But it takes a good 36 hours to cure and was a little gooey in the sun at the show. LOL you live and learn.

Love it's color!!!!

There is my Pop manning the fort while I go and browse.

A nice shot of the rainstick and the wormhole. I really like the yellow from the varnish on the rainstick. I'm curious what it would look like on the wormhole!!!

OK, that is it for these boards! I hope that you all liked reading about them. Not only does this blog keep things straight in my head, but I hope that it helps, or inspires or just entertains some of you along the way! Next up is details on my Dad's canoe and maybe along with that, my next board which will be a ten foot "Log" called Waterlog from Grain Surfboards. Good guys at Grain. Check them out if you can. They are also in the Chesapeake Light Craft catalog as well. Later Skaters!

3 Days till the Show! 8/31-9/3/2010

2011-03-03T19:30:00.000-08:00

The Tuckerton, NJ Classic Wooden Boat Show is 3 days away. I had been working 16 hours a day over a period of like 4 weeks I beleive. Not sure. 220 hours plus invested into this puppy. I would be the first to exhibit a wooden surfboard at the show. They had just opened up a surfboard exhibit themselves at the museum so I was stoked to get the chance to get my boards to them and show them off!
Look closely, you will see major impact craters created by little particles of dust in my last hot coat for the board. If I didn't have those, I would have to do NO sanding. Look how shiny that coat is! Unfortuneately, I had to fill those pits in with epoxy and do more sanding to get them out. Mega-suckage!! I think that added another 12 hours on to the ordeal!!!!! It really pays to get a dust free room set aside for glassing so this doesn't happen!!!

*Those Raviolis are awesome by the way!* Blue is staring at me again begging for blood worms. He watches Stargate SG1 with me all the time.

The finishing touches, 3AM in the morning before the boat show. Im using wet/dry sandpaper. Starting with 300 grit moving to 1200 grit. Wet the board with water and sand away with your sanding pad! Laborious, but well worth the outcome!

My Mom and Dad have been extremely supportive of me since I moved back from Oregon. They mean so much to me and I hope they know how much I love them! The taller gent is my buddy Mike Visman. He and I grew up together and built surfboards back in the mid 1980's. His help with this board, as well as my Dad's, is so appreciated! Family and friends mean so much in life! Cheers Guys!!!

Me.
Sept. 3, 2010
Tuckerton, NJ
Tuckerton Classic Boat Show

There was a need for a better rack system, boards kept sliding.

My best friend Wade Donaway from LBI brought his family to the show so he could hang out and whatnot. I don't think I have a pic. Wade is one of my best buddies as well. His grandma and grandpa were the best people ever!

Fin Box August 30, 2010

2011-03-03T18:54:00.000-08:00

*Tom Petty, First Flash of Freedom* on the radio. Second beer in hand. My Krazy krauzen Grand Crux. Well it's Georges recipe from Homesweet HOmebrew. Good stuff. I need to get some of this beer to my dad's co-workers. I will make them a package of brewskis.

OK, I won't give you the dimensions of the box that gets routered out for the fin box to be epoxied into it, but will go over the process. First the box is drawn out from the centerline of the board and then guide rails are placed around the box. The base of the router will guided by the rails keeping the bit from Dad's old trusty router inside of the box that you have drawn.

From there it is just a matter of getting the hole for the box done. I tilted the router when entering the cut so it eases into the wood on an angle until you have a good hole. The depth of the bit I kept at an eighth of an inch or so just so I don't burn the wood or epoxy. Here is what it looks like finished...

What was done next is that the fin is put in the box prior to expoxing it into the hole. This is so you can tell by whatever means that you have that the fin is at a 90 degree angle to the boards hull. Tape off the area around the hole so that you don't make a mess. Layer fiberglass in the hole and wet it with epoxy. With the hole and the glass all wet, set in the fin. Use masking tape and strap the fin from the top to the rails of the board to keep it straight like you want it. Pull down on it if you have to press down on the glass a bit. Hopefully you won't need to. don't stress this step, it's actually not that tough. Just make sure it is straight up and down or that baby will hum in the water and attract those big breaching great white sharks!!! Get your cool uncle to help you get a second opinion on its perpendicularity.

When it is dry, pull off your tape and sand it all flush. I used the orbital for most. I also didn't do my last hot coat. If you noticed the whole hull was sanded and ready for another hot coat. I taped off the finbox and left the edges exposed so I could cover them with epoxy in hence strengthening it and making it look better.

Annies Ravioli time. I need something to go with this beer!

Hot Coats!!! 8/28/2010

2011-03-03T18:39:00.001-08:00

*Pearl Jam* Jammin on XPN!!!!

Shite, you can see some of the problems of epoxy when it comes in contact with dust or wax or whatever. Too much heat. So many variables can make it do what you see there. Some call it "orange peeling" of the epoxy, I call it lemon peeling because it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. To tell the truth I don't know what caused this. I do know that it makes things much harder when you have to sand heavily between layers!!!

The deck looks pretty good here. I didn't get any peeling on this layer. I tape off half way up the rail all the way around the board, that way if drips start, they start on the tape and the area above the tape is mostly smooth. Pull the tape off about an hour into the drying so that you can get the tape off otherwise you will find yourself with a razor knife sweating and praying that you don't leave gouges in the glass leaving marks. That sucks so you gotta make time to be around to pull that tape off or your day will get much worse.

I took several pics of the only design that I put on the board with colored pencils. The best pic was in the shadow of my arm. The design faded in the sun. The epoxy was supposed to have UV protection in it. I don't believe that it does. I may have to go in and make a design with some permanent markers or paint and cover them with super clear box tape and give it another hot coat. maybe........

Deck hotcoat of "The Wormhole" 8/27/2010

2011-03-03T18:32:00.001-08:00

The first hot coat of epoxy over top of the fiberglass layer. This is done with a 3 or 4 inch paint brush. Disposable of course.

*North Mississippi All Stars* playing. Good tune! Still working on that first Sam Adams on an empty stomach so it's all good!

You can see how the epoxy really makes the grains in the wood stand out and it becomes so colorful! Excellent! But along the nose, we see some more "ghosting". Sigh...

A Save worthy of Cliff Lee 2/26-2/27/2010

2011-03-03T18:21:00.000-08:00

*Express Yourself* on XPN. Groovin tune...

So like I said in the last post, I totally fecked up the deck and had to sand that shite off. I went to my friend Brian Gagliana at Greenlight Surf Supply and grabbed more epoxy and more glass and did it over. This is what it looked like after glassing two layers of S-glass on the deck. If you look hard you can see the haze down the center, but that is going to be one "tuff as nails" board if I ever knew one! I actually have the bug to get out there and do another one. I have a ten foot log kit lined up from Grain that I am going to make out of Pacific Northwest Redwood. MMMM HMMMMMM!

After the deck dried, I flipped her over exposing her belly and sanding the laps down from the deck layers of glass. The orbital is totally cool doing this. Melted away the excess glass like butter and the next step was to hot coat the glass with more epoxy. I'm not sure if I sanded much in between these coats. I'd have to check my notes, but you risk sanding through the fibers in essence weakening the board.

THEE Mistake 8/25/2010

2011-03-03T18:08:00.001-08:00

With the laps of fiberglass from the hull on the deck sanded down flush I went ahead and layed down two layers of S-glass down over the deck and went through the process of glassing the deck. Prepping the job and the job probably took 5 hours or so. I had no idea of the horror I would see the next day as I had anticipated that I would just be doing my hot coats of epoxy at this time.

Here is a result of the epoxy at the laps from the hull on the rails of the deck. Wetting out the epoxy on the hull the day before, the epoxy starts to set a little by time I get to the rails, at this point, the epoxy still wets the glass and it still adheres, but it is more viscous and my guess does not penetrate the wood as deep as fresh epoxy does leaving this "Ghost City Skyline" look on the rails. My heart sunk into my stomach. It looked terrible. It looked so bad that I had to take a belt sander to the board which was a grueling task indeed. And then, in another mistake, I didn't take out the middle section because it was taking too long to sand off. To my dismay, that center line about 8 inches wide running down the center of the deck clouded up later under my next coat of epoxy and fiber glass. I shake my head while I write this right now. It still kills me. I so fukked up this board. But it is passable as a surfboard, probably only because of the shape of the frame that Grain provided. To this day, it still kills me. No one at the boat shows noticed it, but I did.

Fiberglassing "The Wormhole" Hull 8/24/2010

2011-03-03T17:34:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure what I had on the radio at the time, but I was listening to a lot of the classical channel and at night jazz, but right now I have Y Rock on WXPN on and a cold Sam Adams Irish Red (one of my favorite beers) in my hand.

These are stands that I made in 1983 when I first started to fiddle with dings in boards and such. It was difficult in high school to be involved in surfing because everyone else liked gambling and drinking. The stands withstood the test of time because I begged that my parents not throw them away even though I moved to Oregon. I am so glad that they are here because they are really really handy in all stages of the surfboard construction. there are lots of different ways to have stands, and some designs are more stable and I may look into those for my next board, but I will never get rid of these.
OK, take notes: This is S-glass, it is really nice, but the weave is really tight, which makes it invisible, but it is difficult to saturate with epoxy so only do it in single layers. Also, when working with wood I am always going to paint on a layer of epoxy beforehand on both the deck and the hull because in this undertaking, when I epoxied the laps, I didn't tape them off, it's not necessary, but the discoloration that you will see in my next post will make your skin crawl! It did mine and cost me probably 100 bucks and another 48 hours of work. It was bad. So, one layer at a time on top of already epoxied wood. I don't think the weight will be effected too much. Not sure.
After watching about 40 hours of Austrailians glass boards on Youtube I once again entered the lions den! Here I am using a white rubber squeegee. WRONG! They are made for polyester resin. Use the plastic ones. But this step went really well. I did record the outside temperature in my notebook that I make all my notes in, I think it was about 74 in the shop with the air conditioners on. It went really well. The glass was snipped perfectly at the edges, folded over nicely. Not sure if I want to use S-glass again tho. Too many micro air bubbles it seems.

*Dave Matthews "Crash" playing on the radio. Mellow tune, but kind of the bedwetting genre to me. My Discus fish "Blue" is staring at me.

OK in this pic you can see dry spots in the glass where the wood beneath sucked up more of the resin that in other spots! This is another reason that I wan't to put a layer of epoxy down first. You can see the fibers in the glass at these spots, but all in all, the epoxy really makes this wood "POP" doesn't it? Look at that black walnut! Frikken beautiful! I'm not sure about the adhesion of the epoxy to the walnut, I guess the only way to find out is to use the board!!! For many reasons, I'm going to make this my personal board and not sell it. Too much time was invested into it to assign any kind of price to it. I'd have to sell it for 7000 dollars to pay myself 20 bucks an hour and make a little profit plus it ultimately did not turn out how I wanted it to due to my inexperience and experimentation with backyard epoxies.

Sanding the Surfboard "Wormhole" August 24, 2010

2011-03-03T17:16:00.000-08:00

Utencils employed in hand sanding look like these! The one that I used the most was the red one. I got it from Woodcraft or Ebay for 20 bucks. It was well worth the money. I did cheat and use power sanders to take down most of the wood because hand sanding proved to be wicked long and really difficult to take off a lot of meat. When I finally got to a point to switch to hand sanding the wood, the red one was the only one that worked well. The smaller foam one was excellent for sanding and polishing the epoxy layers later on and the larger foam one was a waste of money. That one would only be good to use on foam surfboards, it's too flimsy.

This picture shows 3 mistakes that were made along the way. In the second plank from the left, you can see the split in the wood from when I originally glued the deck on to the frames. Just to the right of that you can see a line where I sanded through on the nose around that curve and on the tip of the center planke is a huge spot that I sanded through. I simply filled them with epoxy and sanded more and they were hardly noticeable in the end.

In some of the previous posts you saw the tailblock mounted on all large and clumsy, but after a lot of power and hand sanding this was the final result for the tail. I'm pretty happy with the result and next go around I am going to spend some time making nice designs in the wood. I kind of liked how I faded the colors light to dark in this one. I was really happy with how crisp I had gotten that line where it meets the planks.

Left You Hanging

2011-03-03T17:05:00.000-08:00

I left you guys hanging with "The Wormhole" project pics and descriptions. Totally my "bad". It was a very busy time trying to finish up that board and get it, and it's older sister ready for the boat show that weekend. I am, over the next few days going to try and catch up on those pictures so that I can get to the pictures of the Canoe that my Dad is building downstairs. We have gotten over most of the hurdles of setting it up for stripping and I think the rest of the project will fly by pretty quick. Stripping is the most interesting part. The work leading up to stripping is really the most important part and is pretty much a pain in the azz. But the whole thing has to be level and straight because we are working off of a center line and it's all got to be 90 degrees or parallel working from it. So yeah, lots of eyeballing and making sure it's all in line or the canoe might just go in circles! A'ight, let me get to the surfboard. Have a nice night blogosphereites.

Spring is in the air...in Charleston.

2011-03-02T15:47:00.000-08:00

Ah, the progression from the pre-Christmas snowstorms and all those that followed to the very beginnings of Spring is a most welcomed feeling! It was a tough winter on Philly which was NOT helped any by the city's ineptitude at gauging the foul weather correctly to remove the snow from the streets. They did a good job at clearing I-95, but for the local streets, they dropped the ball.

This is a pic of Benner Street. My place of residence. (I still have the lights up, they will come down now that it is warming up). I was dating a pretty girl Lyudmila and took this pic on one of our dates. I ne'er thought to get her in the pic. She would have said "I'm too fat" in her deep heavily accented voice anyway.

The Wood Burning Stove in the shop on a later snowstorm. I thought it was a cool shot. I got lots of decent pictures from the numerous storms, but blogspot only allows 5 per post so I took a progression of only 3 of the storms. The stove was a gift from Geoff McKonly when I worked for the Philadelphia Wooden boat Factory. Thanks Geoff, the stove is a nice addition to the shop! Geoff is teaching a boat building school in New York City, it's a pretty good school. Don't remember the name off hand.

Here is Andy shoveling a path in yet another one of our storms. This one in early 2011. This one buried us even more than the others and since the others hadn't melted it was an even greater challenge to shovel. The temps hadn't risen above freezing for two months, so it stuck around and it was a mega menace to drive on the secondary roads. Once again, the city miscalculated salting and plowing. Salting 24 hours before a storm, not plowing and then salting in 15 degrees at night instead of at near freezing temps during the day when the sun is out. DUH

And the switch to Spring! This is part of the view from our hotel room on Shem Creek, SC. I have the panoramic, but couldn't load all the pics. I"m gonna load them all on my facebook account (Wissinoming Brewing). It was cool watching the progression into Spring as my Dad and I drove south on I-95. PHilly still had a bit of snow and NO buds on the trees (still no buds on them), but as we got into Delaware, they had a ton of snow from a storm a day earlier and no buds on the trees. Maryland same story, lots of snow, still on the branches with no buds. Virginia, little or no snow and no buds. Virginia looked as bleak as PA did. Southern Virginia had small patches of red color on the trees, very little, but noticeable. And when we hit North Carolina there was clouds of red hanging in the trees. It was really cool for Dad and I to see some color in the trees for once! When we grudgingly left Charleston, those red buds had actually started to bloom and the pear trees were in full bloom! It was incredible to see this happen all in a days time!!! Awesome! The end of February, Shem Creek has an annual Mardi Gras Fete. In sight of our hotel room window were 5 outdoor bar / night clubs and it was poppin! Over 2000 people had signed up for the fun and it was raging for most of Saturday. We kind of avoided it, and that was a pretty wise option anyway. I"m not big on crowds, although there were girls-a-plenty! I had gone out the Friday night before across the creek to Reds and they had an incredible band from Tennessee playing there. A bit of boozing, a bit of dancing with fair maidens of the blond variety and I was in heaven. I was, however, distraught when the band finished up at midnight and everyone disappeared in a flash and I had just gotten a good buzz rolling! So I meandered around that area of Mt. Pleasant looking for more goings-on and found a little pub that had some microbrews for me to taste. Once again, when I got there, there were lots of girls, but after my first beer, they were goneskis. I had Stone Arrogant Bastard to start off. OMG, wicked bitter. Over the top for me, but I knew that goin in so that is that. Nice alcohol by volume content though! Then I tried one of these newly found belgian sours that the craft beer industry is trying to shove down our gullets. It was from Allagash and it was mind curdling horrible. I'm a beer guy, and to tell you the truth, I would not classify this as beer. It tasted like mead that has gone bad! I might be able to tolerate it as a marinade or if it was paired up with some heavy on the lemon meal or desert, but man, I took two sips and asked for another micro brew. I can't recall which one now. By that point I was pretty lit and man did I feel it Saturday morning! After a gallon of water, my dad and I were ready to hit the road in search of some trouble to get into while we waited for my nephew (the reason we were in SC in the first place. He's at the naval weapons station getting training as a petty officer in charge of nuclear power plants on carriers. we are pretty proud of that lad. a brother to me and a son to his grandpop. a good guy all around). While we erroneously driving to find Fort Sumter (which is actually in the middle of Charleston Harbour) and laughing at the futile drive to the south shore of Charleston Harbour, Chris called and we changed direction and headed to a truly spectacular sushi lunch in which Chris drank a full bottle of plum wine! NICE! I passed not wanting to waste a truly delicious repast. We found ourselves at the south battery of Charleston ogling the college girls in bikinis and sweating alcohol. A truly summertime thing to do! OH! and my Dad claims to have seen a "very large shark fin" in the water! If it was Philly I'd say it was probably a half submerged pizza box or some other form of refuse, but this was Charleston Harbour. Immaculate to the core! Maybe he did see a fin! I would bet it was a dolphin eating baitfish because they are starting to run down thar I do believe.

Friday morning before Chris's ceremony we dropped by the Yorktown to see the Fighting Lady. This is a really good pic. We timed it so that during a 2 hour rain storm we were on board and below decks to stay dry. Pop had a lot of fun. I'm glad he didn't let the rain get to him too much!

And so goes my introduction into Spring 2011! We Yankees are all just waiting for those trees to bloom up h'yar!

Commence Sanding!

2010-10-31T08:47:00.000-07:00

Here I am cheating! I wanted to hand sand the board completely, but sanding by hand is ridiculously time consuming and quite difficult! So I borrowed my dads old Porter Cable orbital and with 60 grit took off some mEaT!
Pic of the deck in the sanding process.
Pic of the hull in the sanding process. Looking pretty sweet! Only problem is that the walnut is sooooo much harder and creates problems with a softer wood next to it. So I was thinking at the time that the walnut will be raised higher than the cedar creating a wave. It did. But, hey a surfboard that both creates waves and rides them? Nice!
So like the tail I cut off using the jap saw and I sanded a straight line across (a plane perpendicular to the overall average plane of the board) and glued on my tail block. I'm not sure if I showed the process of making that or not here. Basically a bunch of different woods were just glued and clamped together then I shaped them roughly on the belt sander. So i glued them on and just taped them. Excellent tape.
Ah HA! My Pop made these for me at home. Aren't they perty? Screw type air valves and leash plugs made of brass and stainless.

Big Shout out to Mike Vis who made me finish my blog up! Mike really helped me sand and polish both of my boards to get them ready for the boat show (s) that I showed them in! Will post pic later.

Asta la taco! Happy Halloween!

SLACKER!!!

2010-10-31T08:33:00.001-07:00

I've been slacking! I find the blog a bit more difficult to post on than on facebook so I just did all my posting on there, which left some of you high and dry. My bad! So I will slowly pick up where I left off from gluing the deck planks on. Since then, I have finished this board and have another being sent right now. A ten foot "waterlog" from grain. Just the frame. I will mill my own planks again. Also Pop and I started on his canoe downstairs. We are just putting up the forms now. Taking a break though because he and mom are in Florida seeing the rat.

Ah, I see once again that I will have to "re-figure" out how to post pictures on here! Wutapain! I gotta go last pic first, first pic last and how to organize them? Dang I forget!

OK last pic first: Once the deck was glued on, the clamps were removed and all the excess wood around the edges were sawn off with the Japanese saw. The best thing I ever did was to buy this expensive hand plane from Lie Nielson. I used that to shape the rough outline of the board as you see in the last two pics.

The first pic: which should have been last is a necessary evil! Part of any job is cleaning up after yourself! That is like rule#1 and seems to be forgotten most often. But never by myself, Never!

A'ight, lemme get on to the next pics!

Laters and remember, Be Green and Flow! All you parents with runny noses who have kids in school know what I mean!

Deck glued ON!

2010-08-22T14:13:00.000-07:00

My pop checking out one of the cracks in the deck. He helped me in a time of crisis! We were clamping her up and SNAP! Three times! I almost freaked, but calm and cool Cork kept me sain and glamped up the splits for me.

I didn't document the whole process with the camera, but I will try and write what we did.

First on the bottom side of the deck I drew the centerline for the keel and where the frames would be. I would put any extra 5200 caulk on these lines. It took the keel and 3 frames fore and aft until it ran out.

Then the frames on the board itself were caulked with 5200, extra on deck, and the rails got painted with Titebond III and a 1 inch chip brush (project in total took over 32 0z. titebond). The deck was alingned with centerline and the fore and aft markings I had made and placed gently on top of the frames. Then the invaluable Courtland Null and I ran battens across at each station and clamped them down on either side starting in the middle and working aft. Then we worked forward. I'm wondering if a different sequence would have been better to avoid the deck splitting at the nose. Not sure.

We also had to put wedges in some of the battens to get the deck tight to the glue. It was weird this go around. This may have been a result of my initial thickness planing and hand planing a small concave in the bottom of the deck. The splitting as well. I just hope that the deck isn't too lumpy as it's pretty thin to start with.

The worst split in the nose. This one will be noticeable. The others are far enough out on the rails where they will be sanded off. I couldn't tighten this split up either because of all the bends the wood is taking. I pushed it as it was. The eastern white cedar is definately softer than its western counterpart and is fine in the center but at the rails, it's no good. The grain is too wide. Also I paired it up with the Walnut which is super tough and something to think about in the future.

Note making in my boat notes book. Later reference is always good. Joe Gass took this pic just as he was on his way out to Hawaii. I hope he sells my boards to the locals. LOL LMAO

"the Wormhole" all clamped up.

Gluing in Fin Blocks and Valve blocks

2010-08-22T14:02:00.000-07:00

Howdy folks, if there is any.

This is a valve block epoxied in up at the nose of the board. Other folks put them in down by the tail opposite the leash plug box, but being that the tail will be under water 90% of the time I feel it better for it to be out of the water. I have the spot measured from the nose and will bore a hole into it and drop the valve into it after I glass the board. Notice it is slotted for air flow.

Here is a pic of the fin box and the leash plug box. They are basswood and donated to me by Greenlight Surf Supply. We all believe in recycling so Brian gave me his leftovers from stringer manufacturing and I am able to get some use out of some really fine wood. Thanks Greenlight Surf Supply's Brian Gagliana! The wood is really for support purposes. When the board is finished it will be flipped over and the area where the fin box goes will be routed out and the box dropped in.

Captain Black always helps me think.

Last of the Cove and Bead Rails

2010-08-22T13:56:00.000-07:00

Oh yeah, this is the tailblock glued up. Not sure if I posted this yet. I wasn't sure if I was gonna use it, but after I sanded it on the belt sander, it looks pretty good. Pics to come.

These pictures are looking awefully familiar. LOL My home made clamps.

Cove and bead rails ready to be planed flat on top to receive the deck!

NOAA: Second Warmest July and Warmest Year-to-Date Global Temperature on Record

2010-08-17T20:14:00.001-07:00

I calls 'em as I sees 'em!

Here I fattened the tail by gradually raising the thickness of the keel and the three last frames buy gluing on a thicker keel and steaming and gluing the sides of the frames to match the thickess of the raised keel. I did this so I can put a fin box further back on the tail than the board was originally designed for. My intention is to really curve the rails near the tail and move the fin further back on this board for nose riding. I hope it works!

A different view of the modifications that I made to the design. I made the tail 3/8" thicker.

While glue was drying on a cove and bead rail and the modification I decided to manipulate some more wood by removing a few edges of the inside cove side of the strips so I can get a tighter fit to the frames. It worked well. After the few initial strips, I was able to just mark where the frames were on the strip and notch out the inside cove. Fits nice and snug that way. Adds time to the process though. To do one strip on each side is taking over an hour this way. I also am applying glue with a brush to the bead side which also adds more time to the process, but I want a good seal. I wanna fill gaps.

Bed time!

Full Moon, will be at 1:04 PM Aug 24, 2010

2010-08-17T19:52:00.000-07:00

Moon is Waxing right now.

The next morning it was 72 degrees in the shop. There was plenty of time for my brother Keith and I to glue and set the frame in place. It was totally the right thing to do to wait for better temps AND to have a helper! I didn't have the camera with me to get a pic of Keith, but it was a really big help having him to lend a hand with getting those clamps set.

I don't know why those pics are side by side, but oh well.

Left one is just me fiddling.

Right one is me whittling! I had to carve a few of the longer (10') cove and bead strips by hand. I haven't gotten my bits for the shaper in the mail yet. Luckily I won't have to make any more. These were strips given to my by Geoff Mckonly. Leftovers from a class he taught. What sucked was this strip I am working on snapped and I had to make it over 3 times. Some had knots in just the right place, some had rotten spots, and some were just not steamed right. I steamed them with my clothes iron from college. I think this is the first time that I ever used it! Not sure. I may have ironed a few shirts back then. Not anymore! T shirts don't need ironin'!

This is the jig I used to hold the steamed stips in place. I did two strips at a time facing opposite of each other so the bends would be for opposite sides of the board. Jig was another Geoff donation.

The Chine strip is the innermost strip. It's square and gives the board it's ultimate shape. Outside of the Chine strip is the first Bead strip with a flat bottom. This is the base for all the bead and cove strips that will form a curve over the frames for the rail of the board.

Bees Trap Deputy in Car for Three Hours

2010-08-17T19:27:00.000-07:00

It's true! Someone said that they saw it on Fox (News).

Yo, it's been a while, my bad. Weather weirdness and tool delays Held me up a bit here and there.

If you can't see my pictures, try clicking on the empty box. My dad says he can only see an empty box but then he clicks on it and it comes up.

That first pic is just me drawing a 1/4 inch wide centerline where the keel of the inner frame will go. Drawing it out gave me time to think of a way to keep the keel from squirming around when clamping it like it loves to do. My solution was to put keys every 8inches in between the frames on either side of the keel line. Worked great!

Here I am cutting out the rough outline of the board with a $19.99 Skil Jigsaw. Bad Idea. It's so rough it breaks boards. I switched to my japanese saw before I did any damage.

The Keys. Not the ones in Florida. Would be nice to go fishin there. Bonefishin' with fly rods sounds like a good diversion.

These actually worked really well. I left them in place after gluing. I don't think they will snap off after being mucked with the 5200 caulk. If they do, mega maracas! New musical instrument/surfboard.

The frame setting in place ready to be glued.

This process was delayed a day due to the temperature of the shop being 90 degrees even with two air conditioners running. Dow 5200 only has a working time of 15 minutes at that temperature. no can do. The temperature would be in the 70's the next morning. It was a good idea to wait. See ya!

Wood Planing gives Blisters

2010-08-11T11:31:00.000-07:00

Hello, the last two-three days I have planed the planks when I could. Went canoeing and to the beach as well so not much time was dedicated to planing. Which is actually a good thing because my hands were tired and needed a break in between each plank anyway. Plus there was the odd blister on my forefinger that was WEIRD! Each side took a good 1.5 to 2 hours to get the planks more level. I didn't think it would take so long, but I needed to get used to the hand planes anyway. I could see for production reasons that an electric plane would really come in handy for saving time. I'd have to learn how to use one of those better as well!

These are the chips from just one side. I really shaved some meat off of these planks. I'm sure I took an eighth of an inch off or more.

Time for gluing that frame. I'm gonna clean up and get everything ready for when my dad comes over to help me glue it up! See ya!

Planking! "the Wormhole" round TWO

2010-08-07T11:38:00.001-07:00

My Pop and I taped, glued, and clamped this puppy up last night. It took about two hours to do that and 8 0z. Titebond III. Pop showed me a trick leveling the planks. Even still, when I planed them for thickness, I didn't match the sizes exactly so I will be using a hand plane to get them even before gluing to the internal frame. That may prove to be time consuming. I wish I had a power hand plane! But I'm not real good at using one of those and might take too much off. I will stick to hand planing just yet.

The glued together planks from the day before. I'm letting the glue set really well before any planing takes place.

Removing tape on the edges on the bottom first.

Flipping it over and removing the tape from the taped surface. The process took 30 minutes or so.

THE internal frame from the Grain Surfboard Co. "root" kit. The nose section was broken off and I had to glue it. Looks like me, crooked broken nose. The last time I couldn't fit the peices together easily, this time they are too loose so I had to glue them and prop them up with battens and such.

Things are coming along and I should have this board ready for the boat show! *insert loud rebel yell here*

Planking! "the Wormhole"

2010-08-07T11:22:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to figure out the pictures and captioning, please bear with me. Last nights fiasco turned awry. I just left it. Whatevers...
I'm a day behind my Facebook (Wissinoming Brewing) posts.
The first step: Gluing the individual planks together forming the Deck. First the battens (wood strips) are laid overtop the planks setting on the rocker table (strongback it's called in boatbuilding). At alternate stations on the rocker table (look like the rungs on a ladder) the battens are laid across and lightly clamped and the ends. These hold the planks down while the bar clamps are pulling the planks close. All the seems get masking taped so glue doesn't fall out AND to hold the planks together while you are gluing. Not sure if I got pics of that step. I did on my last project if you scroll to March of 2007.

The planks are flipped over, tape side down, brought to the edge of the rocker table and each individual gap is glued. Then it is laid flat once again, battens laid down at stations, and bar clamps squeeze them together. I have 9 or ten bar clamps on this baby with about 12 battens. At this stage I was pressing the planks that floated out of place a little and it didn't work great. On the hull my Dad showed me to hit them in place with a hammer and a block of wood which worked much better indeed!

Plank Selection for the hull. Really nice grains in that Walnut!

Clamping and gluing the keel of the inner frame together.

"The Wormhole" project

2010-08-06T12:11:00.001-07:00

Ah the fruits of the labors of the cast and crew of "The Wormhole" Project.
These planks are 1/4" thick and milled here at Benner Street on a Rigid 4330 thickess planer and an old Craftsman jointer. I was able to get four 1/4" x 3.5" Eastern Black Walnut planks out of a 4/4 x 7 plank because my dad took it into work and had his buddy saw it up on a 12" saw between two fences. NICE! Wood from center outward; W. Red Cedar, E. Black Walnut, E. White Cedar, W. Red Cedar, and then on the outermost rail Eastern White Cedar complete with a series of hollows from a grub that I found eating it!

This is my apprentice Laura. A very attentive learner and genuinely interested in woodworking. She will be helping me off and on with this project as well as the canoe to be started next month.

This is my Pop. The brains of the operation. I'm his apprentice! If it wasn't for his support I wouldn't be able to do any of this with him. This is quality time, even though I give him a load of sh!t here and there. This time is golden. I'm learning a lot from this man!

And here I am messing about with the planer.

All is fun and games until Laura gets hit with an Eastern White Cedar knot! After that and blowing cedar boogers out her nose, we decided it best if she wore her safety gear! Ear plugs included! That planer makes beastly blood curdling noise!

A Short WTF before I begin again.

2010-08-06T11:57:00.000-07:00

I have just finished my first blog about "The Wormhole" complete with pictures, hit preview, hit the back button and it was gone!

WTF???

OMG WTF PPL??

2010-07-22T17:55:00.000-07:00

LOL

It's like there is a forum for everything! I'm now on a forum for thickness planers! There is so much helpful information out there!

I went to Delmont Lumber this weekend and bought Eastern White Cedar for my next "Root" project as well as some black walnut that I want to use for pinstripes on the deck.

I have been researching thickness planers and have decided that the low end ones are pieces of crap, but they are affordable and it sounds like if you baby them enough that they can be an alright tool to add to the collection. Just don't make deep cuts each pass. So I'm gonna get myself a used Rigid TP1300 for 250 bucks. There are bigger used 220 volt ones out there just above my price range and I really don't want to spend a whole lot of money right now....''unemployed'' 250 sounds right and I am only using it for this project and some of my canoe project that will hopefully start soon as well.

Back to Delmont Lumber. Peter Boyce proprietor AND inventor of a lateral wave energy convertor ( giggawatz.com ) is quite an interesting character. Awesome individual who has invented and electrical generator from wave power. He's got quite a mind and his ideas are pretty sound. He's been working on it for 30 years trying to get the government interested. A few years back he had a fire that burnt down his house and most of his invention, and soon after his wife passed away. He's had it rough and deserves some attention for his baby. Give his link a read if you can!

See you all soon.

Sean

I've Been Away

2010-05-18T17:24:00.000-07:00

For to long!

I'm embarking on an endeavour to start a chapter of Surfrider here in Philadelphia. Since I have been here, I have been grumpy.

The idea of starting a chapter of Surfrider here in Philly makes me happy.

Watch this and you will see why:

http://5gyres.org/posts/2010/05/18/the_most_shocking_plastic_pollution_video_youve_ever_seen

Now that you have watched that, please show me your support by giving me any helpful information that you can? Please?

NEW BOAT

2009-10-19T10:51:00.000-07:00

YAY! I'm getting wood for a new boat project from Bear Mountain Boats! Freedom 17. My friend Geoff gave me the forms for the canoe hull so that saves a bunch of time! Thanks Geoff. Geoff McKonly is a professional boat builder whom I worked for at the struggling Philadelphia Wooden Boat Factory. I'm not quite sure that PWBF is still in business or not. But Geoff has a website and if you are looking for anything in the boat building realm. He's the guy to google.

My dad is buying the wood for this boat. It will be a pre milled kit as we don't have the tools just yet to mill our own. Nor do I have the desire to do so at this point. I do, however, have to get that radial arm saw running because the table saw that we have is a kids toy. I can't wait to use my new hand planes that I bought!

It is going to be a fun project with my dad and I working closely. I hope he doesn't strangle me! LOL

Above is a pic from someone elses project. Here is his link : http://www.pdxtex.com/canoe/canoe.htm

Leg

2009-08-20T18:00:00.001-07:00

The Summer Shop

2009-08-20T17:26:00.001-07:00

I had to scale down the size of the shop for the summer and enclose half of it in visqueen (sp?) and cool the other half to a frigid 82 degrees which is better than 95 to 100....that's effed up!

I'm putting a new varnish shell on that Grain Surfboard. I'm just piling them on, getting to learn the varnish, trying to get a really good finish. It is not easy! The air conditioner is helping remove some of the 90 % humidity in the air. It takes the varnish at least 12 hours to dry before I sand inbetween coats with 320 grit on the orbital sander.

Next board I am using my Lie Neilson plane instead of the sander! My lines are not fair because the sander is so round. I'm deeming sanders for superfine finishes only.

Wiss Brau T Shirts

2009-08-17T11:40:00.000-07:00

This is an ancient football referee from the east coast Lenape Tribe. They had a sport very similar to football, where they actually used an oblong hyde filled with straw and stitched up and played between two endzones with goal posts. I'm not sure if men competed against women or that the teams were integrated as research on the sport is limited. But this fella is a spirit who guides the sport. Pretty cool, eh? He/she kinda looks like a football!

Wissinoming Brewing

2009-08-17T11:32:00.000-07:00

Hey y'all.

Been a while....my bad. Facebook took over priority I guess, but you really can't blog on there.

Wiss Brau will be getting T-Shirts soon if you are interested. Although, I really don't consider myself a brewer yet as I am still using malt extracts intstead of doing it myself. The only way I am going to get great beer is if I actually "all grain" my beer. I mean it's good, but it's.......samey. I did 8 batches so far and some taste so similar because of the malt extract being the same. The malt extract I use though is AWESOME for the porters I've made!

I'm also going to build more wood craft in a few weeks. I"m putting a lumber order in for a canoe this week and I might buy another Grain surfboard kit as well.

I will post my pics of production as I go, but this intense heat is keeping me from any big projects.

Surf is coming! Tropical storms are heading this way. I'm fat. I most likely will watch other people surf! I have inner ear issues and no medical insurance....lame!

So keep an eye out for Wissinoming Brewing T Shirts for Octoberfest!

Later YO.

Searching for Lex

2008-11-17T18:11:00.000-08:00

Dude, where the eff are you?

Just so I know where not to be.

Later.

Sean

Turkey Day Approacheth

2008-11-16T20:10:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving '96'

That's right folks it's that time of the year again! To many it means the stresses of having family over and having to cook a huge meal, yadda yadda....to me it means one of the best times to catch fish! So in the age old honored tradition that my brother and I have, we are going to go fishing. Holiday trips either fishing or surfing usually produce good results! Back in the day it seemed that the surf was usually good in some form or fashion, but surfing has taken a back burner recently for a number of reasons, one being that I am fat. But fishing has been known to produce as well and is kinda fun. Not like surfing, but it is a great nature vibe. Besides, fall stripers are back in town and now it's the big males that we are (hopefully) catching. Day after Thanksgiving we might go out on a head boat at Island Beach State Park which in the last week has been slaying the huge blues and the stripers are starting to trickle in. And then after all that, I have a date! Yeah check that out! A young lass and I are going to take a tour of the city via horse and buggy. Should be a lot of fun as I haven't done that before and she is good company.

The only glitch is that I am supposed to cook on turkey day. Yeah, uhmmmmm, so what I did was order the complete meal from Whole Foods.......free roam turkey and organic side dishes.... and will hopefully be back in time to throw that prepped turkey in the cooker. This is where I praise cell phones (which is not a common thing for me) because I have a feeling my dad is going to get a call from the boat asking him to toss in the turkey as I promise to be back in time to cook the rest of the fixins. yeyah! plan of action!

Pretty Girls

2008-11-14T12:28:00.000-08:00

A man is tormented.

The ultimate question is: does he turn in his lonely freedom for domestication?

I've struggled with this my whole life.

This Einstein quote grabs me:

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

And then, there are these quotes;

No, this trick won't work...How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?

Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.

I then refer back to the first quote and ask myself at what age comes maturity?

I put in my time playing the role. Much shorter than most. Short enough to avoid that routine that people fall into and then fall apart. But long enough to somewhere in the recesses of my brain to realize that this was not the optimal situation. I liked where I was in that role. I truly did. I liked who I spent all of my time with. I truly did. At the time I was convinced that she was truly the one to grow old with. Somewhere in those recesses of my brain, the answer was known just not spoken. Could I have made her to be that one that is the true balance of freedom and domestication? Because such a relationship exists.......I think. I'm pretty sure that I have witnessed it in some of my dearest friends. Or I think I have. I probably could have made her that. And she could have made that same choice. It would not be that true balance.

So what is a person to do? Wait for that balance? Be a giggalo (seems to be the best option sometimes) in the meantime? Be lonely in the meantime? OR hop into something monogamous but not with that true balance?

Best yet, why worry about it?

Wiss-Brau!!!

2008-11-13T18:21:00.000-08:00

Wissinoming Brewing Co. got in full swing today after much waiting for brew kettles and sundry items befuddled by a nasty sinus infection. So in the much admired (by me) tradition of brewing beer as they do in Oregon, Ian and I got soaking wet in the rain cleaning crap out by the hose outside. Brewing beer on a rainy day, how my Oregon bretheren would be proud. And the temperature outside was a balmy 45 degrees as Oregon is most of the year! I'm homesick, can you tell?

Ian brought up a bit of irony as we yakked about Oregon weather. He said that brewing in Oregon now is like what it used to be like here in Philly. Philadelphia in the 19th century had in the area of 1200 brew pubs. I think ideally that things have changed much since then. Well, prohibition killed ALL of the small breweries. Very beneficial for those very few that were able to survive and completely dominate the market. I'm not gonna flame all of the survivors as corrupt entities in my conspiracy theory banter because there was a brewery in Portland, Oregon called Henry Weinhard's that survived by brewing Root beer and Orange creme soda, a few others did as well. But what I am talking about ultimately is how people have changed due to whatever circumstances. Philadelphia at one time was the center of culture and progressiveness on the east coast (shared of course with it's other major coastal cities) and now it seems almost dead to what it once was. I can't see the brew pub culture that is so strong in Oregon being popular in more than a few sections of the city not to mention the whole state! Although I am hearing good things about Pittsburg. For the last 15 to 20 years I hear it has turned itself around and has a pretty progressive attitude. Though I have never been. What I am saying is that I would like to see areas other than college towns take on a better view of the world around here on the east coast. Well now that I think of it, those rural farm towns in Oregon seem to be on the same "head up their azz" track as some of the short sighted thinkers around here.

The connection here is that brew pubs (public houses) were places where things happened. They were cultural hubs and I think we need to bring back that atmosphere if this country is to prosper. I read an awesome little article today in: the Mid-Atlantic Brewing News called Landmark Taverns, by Rich Wagner about such things. Major issues debated, governments gathered and formed, the Liberty bell was hidden from the English in 1777, how they were centers of commerce and even courtrooms and how inkeepers were highly repected. Mr. Wagner is writing a book on the topic. He is speaking November 22 @ 2PM @ the Philadelphia Brewing company. I do beleive that I would like to attend!!

Wiss-Brau is just a name for Ian and mine's homebrew. But there is a dream of a public house in there somewhere. Maybe one day there may be another cool public house where the Delaware River meets the Tacony/Palmyra bridge and lads and lasses can relax and shoot the shite about every topic under the sun, or to find a quiet corner to read, or even to have an occasional live band play. A place where the past, present, and future come together over a tankard of ale and some crusty bread and cheese!

Some Spring Fishing Pics

2008-08-26T16:54:00.000-07:00

Female Stripers. First pic is my bro and a big ol cow and then me with a smaller one

Ladytron

2008-06-27T08:08:00.001-07:00

Funny story. I was working on board Gazela Primera (http://gazela.org) yesterday replanking the hull and we finished up about 18:30. We grabbed some coldies, and sat down on the hull out of the sun. Good stuff, drinking coldies, laughing about my new nickname "Get off of me" with my new friends "Oh God, faster faster" and "Is it in Yet?" and watching the bike that I had just donated to the ship get stolen right before our eyes just 20 feet away (third bike in 2 days). Luckily Oh God, Faster Faster was fast on his bike because he (50 yrs) ran the kids down (who were 14 and had a good 200 meters on him) and got the bike back after being called a "dickhead"! Well, this made for good conversation for sure! And when it started dying down a beautiful girl rides up the dock on her collapsible bike. She was, to me, obviously European. I don't know why. Gentle mannerisms, her hair style (above shoulder length, black, curly mussed up beautiful hair), wonderful nose, big beautiful eyes, like I said, beautiful. I spotted her as instantly as I had spotted that brat putting his leg over on my bike, although this time I did not yell at the top of my lungs "Hey! Get off of my bike!" All I said to Faster Faster was "Wow, she's beautiful." in low tones, almost muttering to myself. It was apparent that she was interested in the ship so Faster Faster gave her a tour. Being most appreciative to Faster Faster, I offered our host and his new friend a drink. DENIED! Ha Ha Ha! Here I was thinking that I was being brushed off. But in actuality, it was for good reason. After her tour, Mira (as she introduced herself to us) was showing her bike to Faster Faster and we all had a brief chat. She said that she was having a concert tonight, I asked what kind, she replied "electro" I was like, cool, what's the name of the band, Ladytron she replied, I was like, cool...........having no idea of the popularity of the band which I now believe is worldwide. It's so cool when musicians and celebrities aren't bungholes! She gave Faster Faster and I free admission to the show and buzzed off on her bike. I went to the show a bit late and learned at the box office that Faster Faster had snaked my ticket and given it to a woman! I wasn't peeved, just broke and couldn't afford the price of admission. The awesome girl in the box let me in for free anyway and if I had been in better financial status, I would have bought her a drink. The show was awesome. Never seen or heard their music before. Had a fun time bobin up and down. Mira was gorgeous (guess which one from picture). They did an encore and I left apres encore and grabbed theee best falafel pita I had ever had! Ladytron is playing in Baltimore tonight. I'm going to boring Connecticut for a boat show. I'd rather finish planking the hull of Gazela with my new friends and take a road trip to Baltimore! Ah lost love! Ha ha ha.

Awesome light show Mira, btw...

School's OUT !

2008-06-19T20:32:00.000-07:00

OK OK, so like last week was the end of the school year and I have been like a kid in a candy shop self indulging on "me time". It's been awesome. I've been getting up early and doing chores like paying my bills that I have forgotten about for 5 months and getting them in one day before defaulting and things like going for bike rides on my 3 speed cruiser (that bike is so laid back). I'm diggin it pretty much except for the rear pedal brakes, tough to get used to. It's not really a trail bike, just for pavement so I may have to buy my old trail bike back from someone I sold it to years ago.

I'm getting the shop more and more in shape and am gearing up for a summer of woodworking and possibly more. I have some projects slated and some offers to build boards for some folks as well, so I'm hoping that I am going to learn a lot more this summer! I'd love to take a trip up to Maine to visit that new Grain Surfboard shop and enroll in their boardbuilding class! Their shop is state of the art........in my book...........and very interesting to me. Those guys are so laid back too. I'm just stoked to see that packed shop of my family's from last year start to look like a real shop instead of a storage unit! It's not easy cleaning up 30 years or more of "stuff". I'm stoked to have the freedom to do it now!

Tonight I went diving into a pool on the Wissahickon Creek called Devil's Pool with some close friends. It was dark, the water is mega-tainted with fecal coliform due to the numerous sites surrounding the pool laiden with partially degraded toilet paper. It's truly disgusting how uninformed people are in cities. The areas that need the most education on pollution are often the least. It's a shame really because it is a gorgeous area of the city! I scouted out the scene by clambering into the pool gingerly at first, then did a canonball after Kristy dove in off an eight foot high ledge. "Bomb" cut his fingers trying to open a forty with a rock and couldn't go in as it would have been a mistake with the high poo levels. Ian jumped in and then Kristy once again. We got erked by the inability to see where we were jumping and carefully plodded down the rocky path back to Kristy's car. It was fun while it lasted and good to see Bomb and Kristy again as they are positive thinkers and give off a good vibe. We chatted about future plans and made some tentative future get togethers such as possibly biking across the Ben Franklin Bridge tomorrow or doing some fountain hopping. Sounds fun! I hope that we all stay in touch as making friends and moving on has been such a big part of my life that I'd like to actually stay in touch with friends for once. It's a fact of life, especially in our more mobile society, to have to move on and leave friends behind, but in the same token the process of making those friends (and new ones) is what makes life worth living. We had an informal discussion tonight about what makes life worth while and I didn't have much input until now, but I think connecting with others and making new friends is quite fulfilling. Many people think that leaving your mark on the world is something to strive for. Some everlasting epitaph patting oneself on the back (sounds kind of selfish doesn't it? I didn't really mean it to because multitudes have left a humanitarian or compassionate mark on the world). I guess this is OK, but many of us may not be able to achieve such a position. Realistically, touching those around us is important to our well being. Too, sensitive. Time to go..........

Pray for Snow

2008-02-21T13:58:00.000-08:00

Yup, I'm praying. I only do this when puking and when I'm hoping to have a day off from work. When I'm puking it's usually a prayer that I live another day, but last week, I was puking and praying for the good lord (Alanis Morrisette) to take me. Tonight I'm asking Alanis to bring me some snow. The brats at school and I have one thing in common this night!

Fact of the matter is, I've been here all winter and haven't seen ANY snow at all. Snow is like the only redeeming quality that an ugly city has! It quiets the noise and blankets the trash so that even an empty anti-freeze bottle in a junkyard can look cool for once!

Today was cool. I got a few crappy cell phone pictures of a Red-tail hawk eating a pigeon! Nature taking a swipe at an invasive specie! I love it! I didn't think much of hawks a few years ago when one ate my invasive specie pet parrot............sigh. I miss Pietro.

Anyway, I hope I'm not setting myself up for disappointment with this whole snow thing. If so, there will be some longwinded essay on disappointment and unrequited love in my next post!

Stay tuned!

On a roll

2008-02-11T18:04:00.000-08:00

Cheese Cosmo:

On an 8 inch Italian roll spread mayo? and layer with provolone cheese, add shredded lettuce, light peppercini, italian dressing (or oil and vinegar) seasonings, and garlic powder, toast for 4 minutes in 4oo degree oven.

Do I have that right?

The Havoc!

2008-02-11T17:26:00.000-08:00

Today between trips to the water closet I got an email from a freind from.........yes I spelled freind wrong........I always do..........a freind from Lock Haven saying to check my myspace (which I do about every 7 months). So I did and got a blast from the past of some very dear memories. A friend named Terri had contacted me and filled me in on the goings on in that town in which I spent too many years (for more than one reason as I really didn't like the town all that much......LOL let's just say there was a contest going on with a group of fellows as to how many semesters we could stay freshmen, I remember hearing "seventh semester freshman" muttered once and felt defeated).

But Terri's group of freinds are a part of a family that belonged to a house just up the street from the campus. The Havoc was the name of the house. It soon became the Thursday night destination for me and a small core of freinds. Mostly it was just me and Lex. What attracted Lex and I didn't always attract the others because they were also interested in frat parties and well, personally, frat parties sucked. The only cool one got closed down early on in 86, if you can even call it cool. It wasn't, I was just awed by the lineup of 17 or more kegs. The Havoc was cool. That year was the end all and be all of party houses. I was glad to catch it before the LCB busted those other parties and sent everything underground. The Havoc was accepting and homey like no other. Each room had a different atmosphere all equally mellow and inviting. Most occupied was "The Swamp", Shag's refuge and who knows who elses before him as I was a late comer to the whole thing. Shag had the swamp set up just like Hawkeye's and Trapper John's tent (BJ was , well.......not Trapper) in the crazy 4077th. Actually, it was set up better and had the occasional game of "Beer Trek" happening. Beer Trek!

The other rooms were deemed for veterans only usually and I was rarely granted access being a newbie. I have only good memories of the Swamp and it's occupants. Only good memories of those parties except once, being the bastards Lex and I were, we stole Elio's pizza and frozen swedish meatballs from the freezer of our brothers. Shag and that peanut butter eating freak...(having trouble recalling the bearded one's name..ANDY?) chased Dave and I a bit, but soon gave up. I felt bad about it (the pizza probably made me sick anyway) but they didn't care.

I do, however, have bad bad bad memories of Friday morning Biology lab and smelling the formalin..............barfing is not fun!

Happiest moments: tending bar and sneaking tap hits (Andy was the one to pass me the tap...it was like rites of passage, I remember the look on my face, or better yet, what it must have looked like......one of amazement, joy and gratitude........Thanks Andy, sorry about eating all of your Peter Pan), standing on the radiator in the taproom observing and enjoying the people and vibe, sitting on the roof drinking, Beer Trek, the recliner with the cupholders, and the people.

A while back there was a site up made by Weasle about the Havoc. Does that still exist? I never got the full history of the Havoc. I'm interested in hearing it.

I haven't posted here in ages! For those just catching up with me, please track back and see some of my photos of Oregon and such. If there are any up anymore.

For my freinds in Oregon.........I'm glad your Govenor was smart enough to stop giving illegal aliens drivers licenses! Oh yeah, well I miss you all or something like that. Been doing lots of fishing and teaching. Slowly getting my woodworking shop set up in the back. Start sending in those wood surfboard orders! I'm trying to hook up with an old buddy who is farming Paulonia wood and I want to experiment with that wood for shaping. I got some mega tools for sanding and shaping and well, one day I'll use them! OK, way tired. Gotta bolt.

Terri, thanks for the inspiration!

Next up for me is wooden boat making school on weekends in March and My Coast Guard Captains license course in April........wish me luck!

PIC is my buddy Ian and myself one night working on a presentation for school to get a rugby team going......maybe next year.

Congratulations!

2007-09-30T18:50:00.000-07:00

To my friend! She said yes!

What else can I say other than I knew it from the start.

Some confluences are felt deep within our hearts.

Seen to those who are our best of chums.

Fill our spinnakers, spill the doldrums!

Well wishes given, but not needed.

The future of soulmates is well seeded!

Now, who's got my airfare? LOL

Interlude

2007-09-24T18:10:00.001-07:00

I apologize for the interlude between my posts once again. Sigh. I wish I could spend more time talking to you all in this forum. Your comments mean a lot to me as do your blogs. I am proud to have such good freinds (dod dammut I can never spell that right!)!

I wish my writings more poetic. My technical style pathetic.

Words from my mind do not flow as easy as some we are proud to know.

Bonfires on the beach seem so far from my reach.

Netarts seemed boring and empty, Philly's its nemesis, crazy.

Love what you have Oregon, keep it before the glory's gone.

Like the cedar be strong and weed out the throngs.

Fall is starting here. Trees are starting to change. I greet the seasons with longing. As wonderful as Oregon is, the seasons are not as apparent. Nights are cooler although the days still hot and muggy. I hear of the melting Arctic and look around me at the culprits. They are also more apparent here. Unfortunately, one cannot go canoeing without hearing a car in the distance.

But still, the trees change, the nights get cooler and one can reminisce of the Hallow's Eve when it snowed, or the year I dressed up as an astronaut with the kazoo fronted helmet. I remember the torn grocery bag that my candy spilled out of and how the next year I donned a pillowcase. More durable. I was serious about my candy. Almost as serious as the few quarters we might gleen at Christmas time singing carols that we forgot the words to!

This season I'm looking forward to a few go outs in 3 foot ground swells and a backpacking trip in November, then December, then January. I get lots of vacation time now. Jewish and Christian holidays. If there is any argument for religion.......that is certainly a teachers'.

Thanks Slim, thanks sspider, thanks Mr. Zero.

Perhaps I can save up a little sumtin sumtin for a fare in the future.

The trip begins

2007-08-20T18:55:00.000-07:00

Packed and not ready to go. Pops sure is photogenic! ha ha hah
A person could NOT ask for better friends! This is a good picture! Thanks for dropping by to see me off Dave! Chad, get in touch my man!
Wyoming! Beautiful, mellow Wyoming! Of course this wasn't the first state that we crossed! We didn't take many pictures of Oregon as our start was late in the day and it was raining. Idaho was awesome the next day, but pictures where on the back burner as the weather was our main concern. It snowed mostly. And it snowed hard! Visibility at times slowed traffic to 25 MPH. The roads were fine as there wasn't much on them, but it sure was fun!

Utah, well, I'd just rather forget Utah along with Ohio. We'll get to that later, but Utah was commercial, high stressed, and just this really weird vibe, especially in Salt Lake (Which was no longer visible from the road). The word "gross" may be used to describe the vibe there. Of course once on the road from Salt Lake city the Geology is awesome! But if you are traveling at rush hour the Mormons like to flip the bird more than a NYC cabbie! So, no pics. They aren't worthy!

Wyoming!
What the landscape lacked in beauty (which wasn't much in Wyoming) the sky made up for! There were scenes like this stretched all across this whole state, some with Black Angus, some with horses and most without. At one point on a bluff along side the road my Pop and I viewed a lone rider on his horse trotting down to a little stream about 2 foot wide. We waved, he did not. Perhaps his land was divided by the highway that we traveled. Maybe we just interrupted his meditative stroll. Maybe he just didn't see us. Or maybe he was awestruck as many are by my beautiful truck! :-)
It's a shame that I had the trip map on the dashboard when this picture was taken as it really captures that "big sky" feeling that you get when you are 10000 feet above sea level. Pops and I were both totally taken aback by the enormity of the sky and clouds! I swear you could have touched them! What a beautiful day that was! It made the whole trip worth it!
A lone Wyoming "watchtower" as Tolkien may have called it. There's a house and stables at it's base. I'd be in awe of mother nature everyday looking out my bedroom window at such a sight! I might be wary of a little rockslide here and there as well!
Some of Wyoming's beautiful stratified Geology! What an awesome spectacle! Those different color layers were set down on the bottom of a body of water millions of years ago. The different colors come from different rocks eroded from some far off mountain top, then buried over time and compacted into rock ultimately to be later uplifted like this! This spire must have had a more durable layer of caprock on top to help it maintain the castle-like shape. How majestic!
This is just one of the best pics Pop took! Imagine if only that were a steam locomotive! I live in a wrong era! I suppose I should be dreaming that that locomotive were powered by Biodiesel. Still, it's just a classic photo from inside the cab of Moby through the window.
Pops and I had a little joke running once we got into Wyoming that we would only see a house every 75 miles or so. Usually a fellas' property was bisected by the road as the house and stables would be on one side of the road and the prairie on the other. We surmised that there was once an angry landowner. Anyway, the joke backfired on us as we were going to send my Uncle Rich "one of the only houses in Wyoming" as there were no more houses left but this utility shed before we got to Nebraska.
It was difficult to capture the feeling of the sky and clouds being so low and perhaps this isn't the best picture of that, but the landscape...
One of the last sights from Wyoming. I bet this is breathtaking with more snow on it!

Some trip pics and stuff.

2007-08-20T18:26:00.001-07:00

Just had to post this picture of said unnamed spot. Right Slim?
Mark refused to be seen with the human slug for fear of incrimination.
A beautiful North coast view. Not much of a swell at this spot today. A cove just up the road called Shorties is a popular spot for good reason.
This is the view from Tom and Lavelle's place in Lil' Utopia aka Netarts Bay.
This is my Pop and I in front of Moby the white whale at Tom and Lavelle's in Netarts, OR.

These pics are from a little diversion that I took my Pop on at the Oregon coast. It was his first time out there. Not the last. I'm gonna pull a trailer out in a year or two and let him tag along. We hiked Cape lookout and checked out a lighthouse at Cape Meares. Then traveled north after a nice night with Lavelle who made us a great lunch and dinner.

We stopped in Cannon Beach at one of the best surf shops in the US. Free beer, need I say more? Well if that ain't enough for ya, he's got teenage girls at the register.

After that we headed to P-Town for dinner at the Horsebrass Pub for a little swaree' with good freinds, fine dining and the best beer selection in the World!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't know if I have any pics of that event. Maybe some of the readers do?

UV Varnish Alert.

2007-08-14T11:10:00.001-07:00

I just got the low-down from an epoxy manufacturer NOT to use Minwax spars on top of epoxy. I suppose the wax part has repelling properties to it and makes "fisheyes" in the finish as I had seen a lot of in my coats.

Sanding Techniques

2007-08-13T18:20:00.000-07:00

I've recently delved into Swaylocks and have been reading up on sanding techniques and OH MY GAWD there are a ton of tidbits to remember! I need to make like a diary of stuff! One of the most important ideas that struck home was NOT TO USE DULL SANDPAPER because it will burn your resin. I've been doing this as I am broke as no joke and noticed that this has been the case. So no more. I'm looking into the best ways of doing so.

If anyone has any tips on sandpaper quality and costs, please feel free to help me out here.

I've been rebuilding (when a board has two broken fins and 20 plus dings, that's what I'm calling it) two boards. I did the first one (a 7'8" "longboard" ((as my bro calls it)) ) quickly and sloppily using.....ahem...........bondo auto resin and the second one, well is pretty much the same. On the second one (7'2" thruster fun board...........7"2"x 21 1/8 x 2 7/8) I employed Q Cell for the first time to fill holes and actually took a little more time sanding. I took on these projects just to get my ears wet with the whole sanding thing again. I didn't make them pretty, or polish them up (as the rubbing compounds and paper is too expensive for me know), but I did go out of my way to strengthen the rails as these boards are from the 1980's and made extra thin to begin with but on top of that, the res has browned and turned brittle. K Man should be able to get a few more years out of them now and hopefully the tail rails (a real bitch to repair) will be a bit stronger than they were.

I've got a couple of pics from the garage for your entertainment.

The last pic is a pic of the bridge to NYC on the way up to Mystic Conn. My pop has better pics. I'll try and share them.

The first pic should be labeled "stuff"...........the second pic as well!

I'm a blog bum

2007-08-06T14:32:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize that I had some readers.

It's like my college radio show that was run through the town's cable TV system. I used to just go in on Friday nights and lay out some mellow jams, some party toons, and some psychedelia. Some friends would join me and we'd light some incense (until the fire marshal intervened) and go in the elevator to stop in between floors and blow cigarette smoke into the elevator fan.

It was a good time. We were just there to have a party and maybe spread the word about and eco event or a cool class trip that was coming up, maybe play a "McGruff the Crime Dog" short about the dangers of narcotics (the name of the show was Peyote Radio). We had this theory that if we said the word enough, some may someday magically show up in our laps and we'd be puking happy monkeys! It never happened. We gave up on it too soon or something, because where there's a will there's a way.

What I'm getting at, is that with all of our desperate pleas to have someone call in and make a request, it never happened. I thought that I had no listeners. The other DJ's would listen out of respect for their fellow DJ I knew, but otherwise nada.

One night at the end of a 4 hour show that I'd been laying out a mood mix (bring the audience up and down and up and down gradually) I got a call at the end of the show praising the show. It seems that there was a huge houseparty where the entire crowd was trippin and I had been effing with their heads the whole time, making them laugh, then making them ponder what is soul (P-Funk Allstars will do that to you). They loved my show! Weird, I thought. I was made aware that evening that I had an audience all along. My show was one of their favorites because I didn't play any commercials (to the deep annoyance of my producer who constantly threatened me with termination) except for "taking a bite out of crime' sound bites. I landed the time slot because no one wanted to work Friday 8 to midnight, but I wound up having a pretty groovy show and even did my own weather and interview slots. The band Primus was having a tour of the east coast with their Sailing the SEas of Cheese promo that they were deluging the college campuses with and I had those lads in for a laugh or two. It was pretty dang cool! But the most rewarding thing about it all, was finding out that I had listeners. I did that for three years. It was a good run.

To all those who read this blog: I know I've strayed for woodcraft on this thread and some others, but I wanted to say "Hey". "Can I crash on your couch?"

Funny how things haven't changed much since college for me! Hee hee hee hee hee

Take it light! Enjoy your summer! Go to bonfires in Crescent City, California and to ones in Pacific City, Oregon. Those are some real people.

Some pics from travels etc

2007-07-18T11:50:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

sorry, I havn't been on here. I'm lame.

been fishing.

Up and running again!

2007-06-19T14:42:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, I have finally gotten back on the net after my move across the country!

I apologize for just dropping off the face of the net.

I'm still not unpacked as my new "condo" (as I am telling all the ladies it is) is still not finished. I had a few walls to rebuild after I lifted the roof up with my truck's jack because the roof sagged as a house built in 1877 didn't have the roof joices sitting on top of the front truss, just nailed to the side. I'm just waiting on a rug now and then I can move in my leather chair and TV and I am set!

I'm still not totally finished my board. It needs to be polished and the pressure valve needs to be put in place yet. I'm gonna do that after I polish.

One note, don't use the UV varnish that I used. Go with more coats of Epoxy. It works soooo much better than the varnish as it doesn't set as fast or streak as much. Spend the extra 75 bucks, you'll be thankful.

In september I am going to the PHiladelphia Wooden Boat Factory to school. I haven't fully scouted out schools, but this one is high on the list. I'm not sure on the curriculum yet, but I'll be going for at least a year. It's an internship in Maritime construction. I have never been more stoked. I'm going to try and get a job with Whole Foods so I can get medical benefits as the school won't accept anyone without medical bennies.

Well, ya'all, there is a south swell tomorrow (Wed) possible and the wind is gonna go offshore at 15 to 20mph, I'm not set up for it totally, but my bro and I are gonna try and hit it. He's not surfed in 7 years, hes getting to use the fish and me the con. then me on the fish!

I want to take out the Rainstick, but it's not polished and ready to go here. If I took it out in this sun it would pop!

the sun here is NOT like I remembered! I'm fried from 5 fishing trips. Yesterday, I took off my shirt............MISTAKE even with 50 spf sunblock.

So far I have caught 5 catfish (blues and bullheads), 2 small mouth bass, 3 striped bass, countless perch for bait, one walleye and a little neato rock bass which I may go recatch and put in a 60 gallon fishtank because it is an incredibly beautiful little fish under 5 inches.

I hope that you all haven't given up on this blog because my next projects in woodworking are going to be up on here!

And what is even more RAD is that the boat building school that I am thinking of has a wood surfboard class that they build GRAIN SURFBOARDS at!!!! I have an erection !!!!

Fin Box

2007-05-04T15:30:00.000-07:00

The router jig. Thanks to Cedar for lending me his router! I'm sure I could have done it (rout out my fin box) with my chisel but the router was much nicer and made really nice lines. I first made up a jig that guided the router with two pieces of strapping parrallel to the center line and fin box (at this point in the boards construction, the centerline is more like a grey area and it's like a roll of the dice, so use your eyes and have an overabundance of lighting!). Basically how I did this was to line the 1/2 inch wide bit up with the traced fin box lines and drew a point at the radius of the routers outside. Since the bit was only 1/2 inch and the cut needed to be 1 inch, I drew two points at both the front and back of the fin box so I can do a cut, then move the guides over and do the other cut. The cuts were done in five or six shallow passes. The red tape in the picture is holding two peices of cardboard in place because on either side of the fin box is a concave, so the cardboard filled in the concave so I could keep the router level. This router has a spot for a bubble level, so I put one in there (in red) to keep the walls even. It worked pretty well. It dug a bit into the hull planks nearer the tail, but only like a millimeter.

Ah, the camera sees more than the eye does. Before gluing, I eyed up the box with a fin in it several times with a level and a square. Another grey area is the level because at different poings in the board it varies slightly as nothing is perfectly flat as well as none of the concaves are perfect either. I did however have a good feeling that everything is mostly level. In the pic it looks like the fin is off a bit. But we must realize that the T-square is the only variable in that picture that is exact. The level is not exactly on and the T-Square may not be sitting totally perpendicular to the level either. It is just a general idea. But damn if it don't look off a bit. Put it to your eye though and it looks perpendicular to the gneral shape of the board. Personally, I think this was the hardest part of doing the board as it could make it or break it. I'm confident that it is on straight. If it is not, c'es la vie. Who cares really? I may never know the performance difference unless it hums like a hooker on Saturday night!
I put my Con's fin in the box, mixed up 3 toobs of epoxy bought at the hardware store with some fine sawdust and slopped it on the walls of the surfboard (which I deeply scoured with a dremel tool bit for the epoxy to fill into and add more support) and all over the fin box. I should have taped around the fin box before doing so, but I didn't. It's a little messy, but who cares.

Side view of the fin being held in place with tape. I'll let it dry two hours before even removing the fin.
There is a top edge to the finbox that will need to be sanded flush and I thought my board was finally shaped, but upon relaxing with my board and a few beers, I noticed that the rails just back from the nose were not egged enough which may not allow enough freedom of movement in the nose creating a suction sort of thing like I did with the first board I shaped when I was a lad. I also want to round the rails more just before the fin box freeing up some more of the boards movement.
I tried to egg the top of the rails towards the tail as to allow water to flow over the deck some for nose riding. This board is thin at the nose and tail and doesn't allow for much rounding of the rails.
So far the boards dimensions are 9'1" and 22 7/8" wide. I don't have calipers for thickness, but it looks around 3".
When the board is ready for glassing, I will tally up hours and money for the construction and shaping part of the board.
Later gang! Enjoy the surf if you are getting any today or tomorrow.

Bottom contours

2007-05-01T20:28:00.000-07:00

Hello Blogworld,

After about 8 hours of sanding with my Craftsman 5" orbital sander and 4 sheets of 80 grit sandpaper I have the board ready for fine tuned sanding with a block sander to eliminate some of the humping that the orbital left behind. Although I'd have to say that the way it is now I'd be happy with as the hull turned out pretty damn flat where it was supposed to be and nicely concave in the nose and the dual concave at the tail. The rails will need the fine tuning mostly. Especially in the tail. I'm considering a slight vee and may have to take more off of the hull at the rails. It needs a little of that anyway, maybe I shouldn't go overboard.

No pics right now. It would be very difficult to show the concaves with my camera.

I'm starting to plan for the fin box and glassing now.

Anyone have tips on putting in the fin box before glassing?

Anyone have resources for more glass and epoxy?

thanks y'all!

Have a great day!

sanding start

2007-04-27T01:11:00.000-07:00

Photo by the esteemed Wilbur Kookmeyer.

{{{Toots and the Maytals, Funky Kingston.}}} (cheers Steve Thornley!)

I'm doing much of what's in the above picture so I haven't made many posts.

After I got the nose and tail blocks good and dry I cut a rough outline of the rail with my jigsaw. My tail block extends back about 3/4" further than what I think is supposed to be the original length. With this in mind, I'm going to make it a rounded squash giving it a little more meat on the end. Why? Just for experimentings sake really. I mean, it's only a half to threequarters an inch and isn't going to drastically change the outline. I'm thinking that if I'm making a little sharper of a rail at the tail for those kind of skating maneuverings that will eliminate some longboarding style surfing, and if I give that style of tail (squash) I can add a little rounded volume to it, and I can recover a small element of the longboarding style that I have giving up with the sharper rails. I think that with this small modification and with a hatchet fin, I can recover noseridability lost with it's larger rocker, sharper rails and squash tail. Personally, I think this shape a great candidate for side bites too. It has a distinctly thruster tail. What is good about that for me is that the thruster tail is the one that I am most familiar with and is a loth easier for me to tackle than a swallow or rounded pin.

There are a few soft spots on the deck. Totally minor one on the nose seam about two inches long. And a soft spot at the tail. I am considering two layers of 6 pound glass on the deck with even maybe a deck patch at the tail and one 6 pound layer for the hull. I guess I better go shop for resin and glass!

Back to more sanding! Thanks for dropping by!

NoseBlocks

2007-04-20T09:53:00.000-07:00

Good Day!

I went to my favorite store in Portland ever called Woodcrafters. Love that place! I had to buy more Titebond III as I like to over use it. I also bought those "pony" clamps pictured above. I'm a clamp whore now. Made in USA and look like they can suit many a future purpose.

Over the last few days I took some small steps on the board with sawing off the tail and gluing on the tail block. Sorry, forgot to take a pic. But I took pics of the nose block so it's pretty much the same.

Between figuring the angles that I wanted for the nose blocks, cutting it with a jigsaw (fine toothed blade by bosch), sanding (I found a six inch piece of one of my battens as a sanding block to be the best for getting a good flat sanded surface to be better than the orbital) and gluing the nose blocks on this morning took about 2 hours total, 3 hours including the tail block as that one was easier.

and

I'm digging this project. Have I said that yet?

So lets add another $5.00 for 8oz. Titebond III (total 32 oz. for the project)

4 hours for gluing the tail and nose blocks on

Tail block

2007-04-17T00:25:00.000-07:00

Hey, that's not like a cock block is it?

I got the tail block glued on. They better kill another horse because I am all out of glue. AND I am broke and out of money. Wilbur kindly donated me with about 30 pounds of seafood to keep me going. Thanks Bro! I hope your move is going well. All your hard work is going to pay off someday in the shape of a 32 foot sailing vessel I'm sure. I'll be there for that long trip around the horn making stops along the way all the way to Hatteras with quite a long furlo in the Caribbean!

Not much time to spend on the board until Thursday anyway. Maybe I'll try and fit in some nose block glueing before then so i can just chip away at them and not have to wait for the glue to dry.

And then Shaping! I'm stoked because I was worried that the frame being tweeked a bit when I first glued it to the bottom planks would mess with the shape, but the lines are looking smooth and no unexpected twists in her or anything so far! I got lucky!

Well, I'm thinking that one cross member that was a bit off by an eigth of an inch or so did not mess with the overall shape because I didn't push the cove and bead strips up against the one side of it that had the gap and I filled that gap in with little wedges of wood and glue filling the gap. Ultimately the board may be slightly wider at that X member before shaping, but it won't be anything that I can notice at this point or for a long time. Besides, the board being a quarter inch wider will be THAT much more stable for my low center of gravity surface assault upon the unsuspecting ocean gods. Is there a local PNW ocean god like how European waters have Lir and the Mediterannean has Neptune?

Shaping!

2007-04-13T22:24:00.000-07:00

{{Simon and Garfunkle's Greatest Hits}}
I started some shaping preliminaries on this lovely Friday the 13th. First on the list was to pull out the flower print trunks in which to shape in as all the good shapers wear them my close freind and partner in crime Surfmaster Dave told me. Well, I'm too fat and had to go with the tartan plaid boxers and moccasins look. No shirt of course.

The above pic is the board just off of the rocker table.

First thing I did in my boxers was to anchor the saw horses to the concrete, so I bought concrete anchors and a drill bit from HOME DESPOT (unfortunately) and secured the perimeter. 30 minutes and 15 more bucks.
{{Peter Gabriel, Biko}}

The above pic is just the rough shaping of the rails done with a Stanley Plane. Worked really well. On downward curves plane down, if you plane up you go against the grain. I brought the edge right up to the outside of the first cove and bead strip. I ripped through this pretty quick at 30 minutes.
In this pic you can see how much rocker the board has. It is a bit more high performance than a log and not a likely nose rider as the tail has a double concave on either side of the fin box so I'm basically going to shape my rails soft and rounded up at the nose and bring it back to a fairly hard and sharp rail at the tail. Not overly hard though. There is a concave in the nose and may be nose ridable So I'm thinking to make the rail gradually get harder at about 2 foot from the tail. Round most of the way forward.

{{Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band}}
Here I glued up some nose and tail blocks. No one every accused me of knowing what I was doing, but I think I got it down. I was going to make the nose blocks rather large (about 4" at their thickest point) but that may prove to be too heavy. We'll see, I glued up plenty of leftover scraps and redwood shingles to give it sort of wedgy kind of look. This took an hour and a half.
Here you can see a triangle that I squared off the nose and was thinking of cutting all that off forward of the hypothenuse (Pythagreous would kill me for such slander). Well you can see that it is a rather beefy portion of the board, but I was hoping to cover up a mistake on the deck at the nose where I cut too much of the top blanks off. But this might look like even worse crap AND weigh too much. We'll see...

2.5 hours today
and 15 bucks more.

Kurt Vonnegut passes on

2007-04-13T05:01:00.000-07:00

This NY Times story is a nice tribute to one hell of a writer!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/books/11cnd-vonnegut.html?_r=4&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Lighting

2007-04-10T23:18:00.000-07:00

Brad brought up the process of "tomming" or using wood rods, sticks, broomhandles (whatever) to pin in place the frame when gluing it to the bottom planks and in my situation I can't really do that because of my lighting along the ceiling joice, but in future projects, it might be prudent for me to remember this when I set up my lighting.

On the topic of lighting, I cannot stress how important it is! I have four flourescent "shop light" fixtures. That's 8 four foot tubes. Really it's fine, but personally, I would like more so I can see angles, flats, curves, hills and valleys better. The point that I am at now with shaping the rails and such is going to be really tough withougt enough lighting. When I used to dabble in shaping living with the folks back in Philly I used to hang whatever flourescent lights that I could find from the ceiling down low at rail level or attach them to the walls at rail height just like most shapers do in their shacks. You really can see any deformities much easier with a lot of lighting. Of course the hippie in me suggests flourescent as after they have warmed up are tons more effiecient than incandescents. You're wallet will thank you too.

Personally, I like flourescents better for this sort of thing. If I'm at home reading or on the PC, I like the color of incandescents as they are warmer, but for working, I like cool or warm white flourescents. Cool whites are slightly blue and for scientific reasons unknown to me preferred by shapers as well as blue as a backdrop for eyeing up the rails, etc...

I have some experience with varnish, laquer, polyester resins of all kinds and polishing them up. Usually I've always done them in a semi dusty environment, but the environment that I am going to do this in now is extremely dusty and I have a dark forboding about having to wire wool out a million dust particles.

One tip I received somewhere on dust is lighting related. I understand that flourescents emit electromagnetic radiation in the form of negative ions and that they attract the positive ion dust particles, so if one is glassing (etc...) to leave the lights on so those particles don't drop off the lights on to your work.

Maybe I'll clean up those tubes beforehand so they have some extra attraction to the dust. Maybe it will work better.

Does anyone have any more dust elimination ideas?

Shaping Stands

2007-04-08T16:55:00.000-07:00

these took about an hour to throw together. Pretty shoddy, but they'll suffice.

I can just clamp them to my saw horses and hopefully there won't be too much movement. If so, I'll throw some corner angles on there.

Happy Easter!

Top Planks Glued On

2007-04-07T19:22:00.000-07:00

4/6

Ah, the journey is one step closer to being at an end! The board reallylooks like a surfboard now!

So far this weekend I sanded the bead and cove strips flat using a chisel, a disc sander attachment on my drill with coarse sandpaper and then used the orbital sander to flatten out any peaks and valleys. This part was pretty straight forward and time consuming. three hours.

The next step was tto put support blocks for the fin, the leashplug, and the bleeder valve. I should note that having a good idea of where they will go from the beginning will save you a lot of time chiseling out the marine adhesive along the frame. With making the blocks, cleaning, and gluing them in, it took two hours.

I then had to cut the boards' outline on the top planks. Basically, I just layed it on top, centered it and traced where I thought the cut should be between the cove n bead rails and the planks. then I cut the bastard on a table saw with a plywood blade. Let's just say that this is not the way to do it! It is incredibly difficult with just one person. But, I have the world's crappiest jigsaw and didn't want to risk splitting any more wood. The plywood blade on the table saw was very smooth and cut like a hot knife in butter. A little too good actually! Lets just say that I cut off too much in some spots, but luckily I was able to fit the top on for gluing just right. cutting the outline took two hours.

4/7

Chiseled and sanded blocks with orbital sander to remove peaks and valleys. 0.5 hour

Lots of dust and debris accumulated over the while and I had to remove it all. Picking the board up, I noticed that it was extremely light in weight! YES!!!! I used canned air to blow out dust, but a good bit remained. No biggie, unless it clogs vents. Along the flattened cove and bead rail tops I used about 6 oz of Titebond III and squeegeend it and for the frame I used 3M Marine adhesive 5200, the 7 day drying time stuff. I meant to use the Fast cure, but opened the wrong tube and as it is 20 bucks a tube, I didn't want it going to waste. Caulked it on all the frame members and put the planks on top and in place. Some moving around occured and next time I think I want to put a line of caulk down the center line of the top planks too, just for the extra. I used the thin strapping in most of the X members and some thicker in others. This process used all of my clamps plus 6 more spring clamps that I bought today. It went exceptionally well.

I did notice that my light duty clamps are totally maxed out, even the good ones I got. There was also slight movement in the center 3 X members ( I could press down on them very slightly) So I piled about 100 pounds of oak 4x4's and tool boxes along the center keel line to help press it down as the flexible strapping mostly puts the pressure on the rails in the widest areas. Don't know if it will help. The 5200 could have dripped off the keel by then. We'll see. No worries, with glass and resin on it, it will surely stiffen up. I may inject glue in beforehand if it is a problem.

Gluing took about 2 hours

cleanup took an hour

I used 20 oz. Titebond so far

two caluk toobs of 5200

this weekend I put about 10 to 11 hours into the project.

Tomorrow I will make some padded surfbard racks that clamp on to the saw horses so I can work on the board on it's side, etc. the Use of the Rocker table is most likely at its end once I undo the clamps next week. I got heat on the board, but I don't want to touch anything for at least 3 days or more to let that 5200 dry completely.

I hope everyone is doing well!

Peace be with you brothers and sisters.

Cove and bead finished!

2007-03-30T08:42:00.000-07:00

Good Day,

Been busy on my board with being laid up with the ear infections and all. I managed to get 11 cove and bead strips on there and some initial planing, but as my glue hasn't arrived yet, it's time to go to the beach and hang out with some freinds. NO surfing because of the ear infections... LOL, good one, yah? Hey, I was always coming up with good excuses why to miss school, I'm good at it. Truth is, I'm scared of dying. LOL Some unfortuanate soul lost his life in 20 foot plus surf last weekend in Newport, OR. I guess common sense flies out the door when you got a point to prove. Me, I like 3 foot surf just fine.

Anyway, I got a few pics taken. Add another 40 bucks for a battery recharger for this project.

One pic is a close up of two cove an bead strips to give you an idea of how they fit together for a better joint.

The others are just shots of the board with this stage finished. In the middle one, you can see how those PVC clamps are stretched to the limit on 11 rails, 12 might be possible but no more! All in all, it only took about ten hours to do all of them but spread out over 3 to 4 days. The glue has to dry and with a temperature of 50 in my basement, it doesn't dry so I had to add heat. The fastest drying time that I got now was 3.5 hours. First timers add a few more hours on this as you will be on a journey of discovery! One that may sound like Chinese New Year!

Cove and bead hours = 12

Money Battery charger = $40.00

Azithromycin and Benzocaine

2007-03-27T23:06:00.000-07:00

Are my freinds! Dual ear infections mean pain, but all works out as I am not going to work this week! What's that mean? It means that I am up to cove and bead strip number 8 already and will go to ten or twelve before I go on to the next step.

3/25 to 3/27 I've been putting 2 to 3 c&b strips on a day. Wish I could go faster, but the shortest drying time for the Titebond I've gotten down to 4.5 hours with added heat because my basement is 50 degrees and humid (I love it!). I bought another 8 oz of titebond III and ordered another toob of fast cure 5200 since I used most of the other. That was 20 bucks and will take a few days to get here.

The c&b strips are averaging about an hour each layer.

On the two x-members that had 1/8 inch gaps due to the frame being off, I glued tiny little shims in so that the strips touched the frame. After the third or fourth strip, they weren't needed anymore.

OK OK those PVC rings suck totall ass!! I hate them. A freind (TO) here in Oregon told me that he drills lots of pilot holes in the PVC before cutting a line down the length and then slicing it because it holds better. Well after an unfortunate event on the third c&b strip where I was having lunch and wondering if all the PVC clamps were still in place and at that very moment I heard a hundred fire crackers going off in my basement where every single clamp popped off in a domino effect, I eventually (on the eighth strip, hey, I like the colourful explitives that I have been coming up with!) got out my Milwaukie drill with a 1/2 inch bit, clamped into a vise, and proceeded to clamp the clamps on to the bit making, in essence, a cove in the clamping facade.

DO THIS FROM THE GET GO! A COVE IN THE PVC CLAMP SURFACE IS A GODDAMM MIRACLE!!!!!!

I didn't take any pics yet as my batteried died again. Im adding that cost in. These steps are boring looking yet, but are really coming together and will soon be photo worthy.

Take care all, I'll be back in a day or two with an update.

8 cove strips = 8 hours
glues = $25.00
batteries = $10.00

Chine Strip and first Cove and Bead Strip

2007-03-24T18:26:00.000-07:00

3/23 and 3/24/07

Chine Strip and first Cove and Bead Strip

Hey y’all internet freaks!

I started the beginning of building the rails this weekend and this is the first step for me that I really got the idea of the shape of the board because it really started taking on the look of a board with the chine strip as an outline.

All done to the sounds of UB 40's earliest music......nice!

I’m gonna make some recommendations before I talk about what I did. Firstly, it might be best to cut a rough outline of the board before or just after the chine strip stage. If you do, use a band saw if you can because the wood splits really easy with most handsaws that I have used. In doing this, I also recommend using good spring hand clamps. In fact, if you take on this project it would be best to have all the clamps necessary, it’s just easier and better. But the spring clamps wont reach in to clamp the first cove and bead strip to the bottom planks if you don’t cut some of the bottom planks off. I would leave an inch of bottom plank around the board’s outline (chine strip). You won’t need them for the chine strip as the cut out tabs in the cross members hold it down just fine.

Now, I left my whole gig on the rocker table with all the supports and shims still in place and haven’t taken it off of there as said to in my instruction sheet. I don’t know why you would, but it made sense to leave it on there to at least hold the form better. It’s not clamped to it and sprung up a bit from it, but if I laid it out on a flat surface I picture some spring loaded disaster with wood splinters flying like a nine pounder cannon shot fired from some frigate of old hitting a gunwale.

Also from the pics you’ll notice my wonderful glue job of the frame to the deck. It looks fucking ugly, but its as sound as a pound. You can tell that it started to dry before I got it all clamped and then got pressed out of its dried outer shell as it got squeezed, that’s why I slopped on the extra, which was difficult to do around all those strappings and clamps, hence the mess, but you are the only ones going to see it and the pictures will be the only evidence of the mess once the top planks go on. So, shhhhhhhhh! You can also get an idea of the kink in the chine and cove and bead at the first cross member. It’s not so bad and surely will sand off. Also, the joint at the tip of the nose is crap. It’s my first time and since I was working from the tail forward, the tip at the nose is the spot that had to be cut last done with a tiny little Japanese woodworking saw. No worries though, I might put a wood block on the nose anywhoo.

Steaming is difficult. What I did for the chine strips is stuck the front 3 feet in a plastic poster mailing tube with boiling water for about a ½ an hour and then steamed them after all but the front 8 inches had been clamped up. That might have made them too soft, hence the binding at the first cross member. But I still like the idea of soaking them in boiling water. It didn’t affect the glue at all. Just took longer to dry. I didn’t do it for the cove and bead strips, but might for the next set.

The Chine strip process took about 1.5 hours and aobut 8 to dry because of the wet strip. At a few cross members I had to “shoe horse” the strip under with a small chisel and had to chisel a tiny bit off of the strip at the second X member. This step also showed me how “off” a few of the X members were. But I don’t see that as a major impact on board shape at this point. As long as the chine strips look good a slight bend here and there can be sanded out a bit. I guess we’ll see with the finished product!

Cove and bead strip went well but needs to be clamped better to the bottom planks and that is why I was stressing the spring clamps as the PVC ones aren’t that strong to fully pull the strip against the planks.

Have a great weekend everyone, I’m off to yet another party. Unfortunately, I got green lung and don’t feel like partying, just feel like working on my board! So, I might not even go! Spanky will kill me though if I don’t show up!!!

Frame Glued!!!!!

2007-03-18T21:49:00.000-07:00

Whew! Uhmmm yeah, Have some freinds around for this one. I got it wired on my own after a bit, but it was slow and tedious as well as messy. It took quite a bit of time and the glue (3M Marine Adhesive Sealant Fast Cure 5200) got a skin over it while gluing, but I'm sure it bonded well. A helper is needed seting the strappings and clamps on. One person on each side of the rocker table. It goes much easier. What I had to do is guestimate where I wanted the clamp to be on the one side while applying pressure to the strapping on the other side and running around the board while applying steady pressure and hoping I don't loose the hold.

I had to go out and buy 90 bucks more in clamps. I got new Jorgenson Clamps at a great store called Woodcrafters. The clamps are made in the USA and Thank goodness I got them. i wouldn't have been able to tape the strapping with Duct tape in its place because the stations are only 24 inches wide and I would reccomend for this board (9 foot Root) that the stations be 26 inches wide. Also, my chinese made clamps failed under stress, they just didn't work and slipped.

If you got knots in your strapping, Use them for spacers only because they will snap! Gunshots were going off!

I drew two lines down the sides of the centerline and it was a great idea because I was able to use that as a guide for the keel. So in essence, my centerline was 1/4" wide. It's a good move.

No matter what I did, my keel and cross members moved around. The keel is mostly straight, but from the middle to nose, it's slightly zig zagged on top, hopefully not on the bottom! It only strays and 1/8" tops, so I'm thinking no big whoop. Also the cross members in areas of high rocker (nose, tail) drift down towards the boards center. I had those suckers at 90 degrees with my square, but they moved eventually. Some a bit more than 1/8" but not much. I'm sure it will work out OK in the long run. I'm pretty happy with it.

I used about half the caulk on the bottom of the frame, then I put the other half along the base of the keel and cross members later to use it up and add extra strength because I have a feeling it might need it. I'm leaving it clamped up until I begin the next step, I don't want anything breaking loose.

On the clamps at the nose I made wedges because the angle of the rocker was too big for the clamps and they were sliding off the strapping. I took a pic of it. I actually over did the angle, but who cares. I got it done!

This bit took about 4 hours. I always overstate the time, but it's average.

Total hours up to now...19.5

money invested other than kit.........$250.00

Fishbone

2007-03-16T00:34:00.000-07:00

"Hey Maw and Paw, what da hell is wrong wit y'all?"

Did some frame work tonight. First thing that I had noticed is that the center glued seam is starting to do the Moses and the Red Sea thing. Oh well, she'll hold up I'm sure. The split may not be that noticible when she's done. It might have been best to keep things all clamped up until I was ready to go on to the next step. The less time between steps the better.

Had to keep things quite because it was late, so what did I do? got out the jigsaw and cut out a very general outline of the board on the planks. Very noisy yes. And since the planks weren't secured anywhere, they were louder than John Bonham and moved like Charo! All this being said, I split one of the boards. You'll barely see the clamps in one of the pics from my having to glue it. Fortunately, the center glued seamgoes exactly down the center of the planks and I marked out how wide the keel is on there some. what I will do is trace two lines the width of the keel on there better tomorrow as a guide for when I am gluing it on.

I'm also going to plane down some of the high spots that the frame may come in contact with.

Prior to pressing the frame onto the planks and rockertable, I may steam the planks but am not sure if it would loosen the Titebond III. Anyone ever done that?

Putting the frame together the first time was easy. Gluing it was a mother. I don't know why but they wouldn't slide all the way in the slots or they would go too far. Plus some of the slots had to be widened or lengthened with a dremel bit. While gluing, I used a clamp to set them in their final resting place which was flush with both sides mostly. I describe it with two pics. The third pic you may be able to see that it is warped a bit. I'm confident that with my anal retentiveness that I can get it all straight in the next step of clamping to the rocker table. First, I'm going to cut out a bunch more strapping about 1/2 thick and decide what to do to put upon the strapping for the concave in the nose and dual concaves in the tail. Mike L. suggested taping some quarters together and setting/taping them atop the strapping.

Peace through Music y'all.

Next step, frame gluing

2007-03-13T04:15:00.000-07:00

I’m about to start with the fishbone frame thing. It’s late, cant remember the name, but anyway, I quickly assembled it and it is warped in all directions. Also, some of my planks need to be planed first. They started warping again, but I’m sure the warping wont affect it once I get it straight just as long as I get it close to flat with the plane.

I like the idea of tracking out where the frame should go. Maybe if I use a wide magic marker the lines will be wide enough that if I slop the glue around that I’ll still be able to see where they are supposed to go.

Does anyone have any tips on gluing the frame? I need to check the forums and such for helpful tidbits sometime before Thursday the 15th because I'm going to get down and dirty on this mutha this weekend!

Thanks for all your support everyone!

Top Planks!

2007-03-09T02:28:00.000-08:00

Doc had a great idea to use sand bags to weigh down those battens and high spots! Cheers Doc!

Had I waited, I might have done that, but, I couldn't wait! It was trivia night and I had a few nice frothy ones and got home and decided to fix a broken knob off of my truck, and that was sitting on top of last weeks bottom plank project and I started fiddling with that. Next thing you know, I was finding a place to stow that and placing the top planks on the rocker table!

I want to give a shout out to Mike L. at Grain Surfboards for the choice lumber. There is some nice "grain" in that wood (western red cedar and white cedar). I'm wondering how the pattern will look eventually.

Does anyone know how to bring out the grain better before fiberglassing and epoxy-ing? Stain maybe?

I want to say hello to my ma and pa, as they had never seen me looking like Frodo until they caught up with this blog.

Last week while the bottom was dry, I glued the two-piece keel together, going as best I could by eye to get the rocker correct and the cut in rabbets that were cut in on either side of the joint in line.

Tonight I taped and glued the top planks and took more pics as well. I'll just throw them up there, they seem to be in some order. I got a different masking tape. The tan stuff that is med to high stickness. Worked good, used less than the blue. Seemed to fill in the crevaces better and I didn't bother steaming or any of that hooey this time to cut down on time. The tape was flimsier than the blue.

I had the tunes down low. Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and a mix made in 88 from a buddy in OC, MD of some really heady reggae. It's an awesome mix, thanks John Spence.

Everything went smooth, taping, gluing, battons, clamping, etc... two more bar clamps and battons would be perfect. Those pipe clamps are still the best! I would reccommend, however that if you take on this project, to have a minimum of one bar clamp per foot and as many battons (sp?). I had a few high spots, but not bad and I don't think they'll matter, i put some weight on them to press them down. And it looks like I might have a few gaps in the butted joints. Not sure, top corner of the planks could have been slightly rounder making it look like there was a gap. We'll see tomorrow. But all in all, the thing is going to be covered in fiberglass and epoxy, so as structural integrity (star trek-YO!) goes it should be fine. I put a pic in there of the planks hanging over the edge of the rocker table exposing the seam to be glued. Hope it helps.

My basement is cold, about 50 degrees F, so I put a space heater near the board this time, last time the drying took more than 12 hours with low temp and high humidity. I better check on it and make sure it's not too hot.

I want to say "Hi" to my vampire Mistress Mango in Philly! She's getting a kick out of my shop talk and would like to someday handle my tools. Or I'm just hoping!

Check back for more woodworking! :-)

Taping and Gluing planks phase two

2007-03-04T01:07:00.000-08:00

Thanks for the comments. Especially the one I love to hate, whoever you are. As long as I don't get heckled I'll leave them on because it is good dialogue. I want this to be professional.

Doc, no worries, I got a 9'4'' down there and its fine. Now a canoe would be out of the question!

So like my planks were dry today from the steaming and I taped the heck out of them to make sure that they didn't move while taped and all went well! I had some old dryed out masking tape that I threw on there as well just to get rid of it because it keeps tearing. I took the runners that I put on last night back off again since I got the clamps today and then flipped that puppy over. To glue it, I pulled the planks to the middle seam over the edge of the rocker table and ran a thin line of Titebond 3 down the seam. I made sure that all the wood was getting covered to be anal about the damm thing and then did the other seams on that side, then went around and did the other side. It all went nice and the seams were still tight together and hadn't returned to the warped shape. So blowing a 20W fuse last night was worth it! NOTE TO SELF: turn off most of the lighting and don't have the washer and dryer running!

I lined my new hull up on the rocker table and placed 5 or 6 battens across it and lightly tightened the C-clamps at their ends. Under the battens went some crappy saran wrap that I wanted to get rid of. With those lightly in place, I started at one end with the bar clamps and worked my way down to get 6 of those on there. I'm fairly certain that I have enough of those as long as the crappy ones don't break (which I could have easily done). Can't have enough good battens though! After all the bar clamps were on, I snugged up the battens as well and all looked nice and flat, but after about 30 minutes one of the middle planks drifted up. Good thing I caught that, so I put another batten across and got a stick and wedged the stick between the batten and my ceiling joice. But the sucka was still uneven. I loosened the bar clamps and pressed on it with a hammer handle. It went into place, but I had to coax it along every 4 inches or so. Seems well now after I tightened it back up. It was probably OK as it was anyway, but I want it to be as easy to sand as possible. Which reminds me, I wiped up the excess glue as I went with a wet rag.

It's drying Now. More tomorrow as I start the top deck or the fish skeleton frame? hmmmm

ON another note, if you are going to attempt this, I found out the my stations were a little too thick to be able to use the spring hand clamps, if you are going to use them, Use something thinner, mine are actual thickness of 1 1/4".

Clamps

2007-03-04T01:02:00.000-08:00

I bought 80 bucks worth of used clamps. of the bar clamps, the heavy pole clamps are the best, the blue ones from Irwin the second best and the other four are crap. I really should have another two bar clamps. I now have 14 C-clamps and it really is the minimum as well.

Bottom Planking phase ONE

2007-03-03T03:06:00.000-08:00

Today I bought a few 30 fender washers (big washers, small holes) at a whopping 0.07 dollars each. Because my stations were only 24.5 inches wide I couldn't put my 1/4 inch runners on top of the rocker table and decided to put them on the sides and figured the most secure would be with the fender washers.

NOTE: Always drill pilot holes for screws! I learned a long time ago that sheetrock screws will split your wood, take the extra time and save wood!

My goal today was to get the bottom planking taped up and flipped over ready for the gluing with Titebond III. But the planks were longitudinally warped so what I did was wedge them in with shims, which was difficult. I learned that I needed to clamp down strapping across the tops of the planks at the stations as the planks pop up. I only have 4 clamps so I could only use two strappings at the stations fore and aft. I thought to myself that the tape is just gonna come up as the planks pull away from each other because they are warped and that the most tape in the world will not keep those suckers butted up against each other. And that could be a bitch if I did get them taped up, flipped it over then butted them up again as the tape might bunch up in the butted ends and gluing would be complicated more so. (( the purpose of the tape is really to just keep the glue from dripping out of the butt joints))

So, my idea: Wet towel and Clothesiron the entire top surface of the planking hoping that I can eliminate some of the warping. I did it.....3o minutes fore, 30 minutes aft (four foot towel). It's still shimmed up. The planking bellied up as it was wet, but is subsiding as it dries. Tomorrow I will tape up the seams and take out the shims AFTER I GO CLAMP SHOPPING AT THE THRIFT TOOL SUPPLIES PLACES!!! I miss east coast flea markets!!!!

I'll let you know how the steaming worked

Wood Surfboard.

2007-03-03T02:41:00.000-08:00

I'm edeavoring to work in wood because I want to build cedar strip canoes as well as other boats and methods.

Because a canoe would take much more time and money to get started in this, I opted for a surfboard kit from Grain Surfboards in Maine and had the kit shipped out here in November of 2006. Mike L. from there included some nice peices of lumber in there and I am hoping that she will turn out real nice.

2/23/07 I finally got rolling on the rocker table which is similar to the strongback used for canoe building so I'm liking the similarities here. The board is the 9 foot "root" and is exactly what I am looking for. In the future I may shape the big boy version of the fish styled "wherry" that they offer. But the niner will be good for now as I need to strengthen my paddling capabilities.

I got two ten foot 2x6's at a NON HOME DESPOT type lumber yard. Sure I paid another two bucks, but I didn't rape a third world country or put the local small business hardware store on the unemployment line either. (today's rant is now over)

For the slats, stations, or strapping that go across the 2x6's I am using dumpster discards from work (my bosses joke that the board is going to have return to XXX across it). They turned out to be 1 3/4 by 1 1/4 inches which is pretty OK in my book. I ripped a 1/4 inch off of the 2x6's to make a runner that goes along the outside of the rocker table a 1/4 inch high and is screwed down at each station for the first step in gluing and clamping the planking via the wedge method. I then carefully with the aid of a large square clamped and screwed in the stations to the 2x6's (after I had cut all the stations to 24.5 inches).

That day I also made about 100 of the PVC clamps with a ten foot 4" white PVC pipe. I ran the length of it over my table saw between two rigged guides (fences) and made a single cut the whole length. Then I carefully cut about 1 inch rings from it. It wasn't easy and found that it went better if I was able to prop the pipe up on teh rocker tabel between two stations to keep it from meandering about as I was cutting. Also the rings took off like rockets and would have shot 30 feet I'm sure, so I set up a box on a garden chair that the shot into. If you do this, wear your safety gear and be very careful of the saw blade!

Return of the Green Demon.

2007-03-03T02:09:00.000-08:00

I had this blog title about a year ago and chose to delete it for a few different reasons and recently I endeavored to have another blog which I should pull the rant off of that one and place it here. I may do that in the future, but it's late and I just want to get this up and running.

So trim my shrubbery and call me Frodo! (thanks for the new nickname Spanky)