Hey Marty, that drawer front looks suspiciously like a boat. The dining room server Marty built this spring foreshadowed what was to come this summer, fall, and winter. This spring and summer a dining room server, a 20-foot seating area, a large bed, a laundry table, a walnut ship's ladder for a loft, a walnut rocker with at writing tablet, a shower screen, and a gong rack have left the workshop. The website will soon show the process and completed product for most of these projects. It was a busy summer and we are all glad that fall is here!
The surprise project of the year is Charles' 12'9" Cat Boat. At the moment it is filling up a good part of the workshop. Charles and Marty used some serious brain power and translated Antonio Dias' plans into into a full-scale plan on the floor of Marty's shop. Now the boat is coming to life as it becomes a 3-dimensional reality with the molds, ribbands, stem, forefoot, and transom in place. Sometimes one of the most challenging parts of boat building is finding the wood. Here is an excerpt of an email Marty sent to Antonio: "...we went traipsing off into the woods at an undisclosed location and found a really nice big locust tree that was all but dead. I cut it down with the chain and saw bucked it up into manageable pieces then loaded it in on the truck and headed home.
A few more hours with the chainsaw and planer produced the part we were looking for. A nice solid naturally curved forefoot that was wide at the mast-step and tapered down were it met the stem. The tree was big enough that I was able to avoid having the heart wood in the piece. Locust is good boat wood but I don’t like using the heart wood. I was able to make another cut on a log that had a nice branch coming off it to produce the transom knee. It is a fine knee! The grain follows the curve exactly. I am glad we chose not to settle on what we had previously acquired for wood to make these parts."
