The Totem Pole

                The totem pole was a project to celebrate the 20th anniversary of SOLO, a school for Wilderness Medicine in Conway, NH. The owners of the school wanted to do something different to mark this milestone, so when they approached me about carving a totem pole to adorn the inside of the main lodge at the school: how could I say no?
                My accomplice in this project was my then neighbor and friend Hank Hubbell. Hank is gone now, but he was a delight, and a talented carver. Neither of us had ever carved anything like this, but that was part of the attraction. I made a scale model, and then Hank and I started to shape a huge white pine trunk that had been seasoning for a year. We first cut the trunk into four smaller, more manageable parts, because the finished totem would have to be moved into the main lodge of the school.
                We used a variety of tools, and in fact, had to make some special adzes just for this project. The real trick was to pace ourselves. There was so much to do that it was very tempting to thrash away and wear ourselves out. We found that if we worked several hours a day, not only did we not burn out, but the time in between work sessions often generated good suggestions on how to improve our carving techniques.
               We worked consistently over several months. Finally, the pieces were ready to transport inside and assemble. This process was, basically, one of; “many hands make for light work”. The hardest part was getting enough people together and organizing them to keep the scene safe.

              When the totem was up and in place, there was a celebration, and some coverage in the local newspapers. For me, however, the best part of the project was getting to know Hank better.

                 Hank Hubbell working on the totem pole

                 

Sea Kayaks

           Over the years I have built a collection of sea kayaks. I got interested in the process after a conversation with some friends who were sea kayak guides. Originally I was interested in the number of modern kayak designs that trace their inspiration to Greenland boats, but I also wondered what alternatives there were to these designs. That was when I discovered George Dyson and the western sea kayak designs that are generally lumped under the generic Russian term; “baidarkas”.
            The first baidarka I built was a behemoth twentyfour foot long double based on a Kodiak type. Although she was fairly light, her length meant she had to be moved by trailer. She could carry huge amounts of camping gear, and supplies. The Kodiak double was built as a “skin” boat; that is a cloth skin over a wood frame. The frame was built using drawings and photographs from museums. The skin was a 26 oz nylon that George Dyson was selling as kayak skin. It was easy to work with, and when painted with a hypalon paint combined virtual indestructibility with the softness and flexibility of traditional boats covered with animal skin.
             The Kodiak boat was a great platform from which to launch a series of adventures on the Maine coast and in the Canadian Maritimes. It also proved to be the first of what turned into be a fleet of boats. Mostly Aleutian single cockpit boats of various sizes, although an occasional Greenland type snuck in as well. I experimented with different species of wood to see what effect this would have on performance. The problem with this line of approach is that it creates more questions than answers and thus more boats.

             Most of the time when I pass by “the fleet” on my way into the wood shop I am reminded of the many wonderful trips these boats were part of. Sometimes, however, the presence of so many boats is a little oppressive. I can’t possibly need all of them, in fact some would not get used at all if I did not loan them out to friends from time to time. I am reminded of a T shirt I saw one day that read “Plures naves quam mentes” (More boats than brains).

Chess Sets

I am a terrible chess player. I have some good standard opening moves, and my endgame has a lot of potential. However, after the excitement of the start of the game, my mind wanders. My problem is that thinking about how the game works is far more interesting to me than playing the game. Perhaps if I spent less time thinking about why the knight moves the way it does, and a little more time actually watching the knights, I would stand a better chance.
               While my playing ability is questionable, the game still interests me, and I have great respect for gifted players. It should come as no surprise then, that I have made several unique chess sets. In each instance, I had an opportunity to create something with minimal constraints to time and scale. In short, the only real limitation was that the end- result still had to be recognizable as chess.
Jungle Chess:
               The first of these projects looks rather tame and conservative to me now. The opportunity arose when a wonderful friend and neighbor, decided to clean out, reorganize, and re-invigorate her pottery studio. She does not like working in her studio alone and encouraged me to start some sort of project. Not too long before this, while on a trip to Italy, I had seen an interesting chess set in Venice. The pieces of the set vaguely resembled African animals, and the board was made of ceramic tiles with jungle scenes painted on it. I liked the idea, but not the execution.
               The more I thought about it, the more I thought it might be fun to expand on the idea. The result was the ceramic “Jungle Chess” set. The King and Queen would clearly be a lion and lioness, the dignity of the silverback gorilla lent itself nicely to the Bishops. The unusual move made by the Knight, and the awkward nature of the rhino seemed to go together. The mass of the elephant seemed an appropriate representation of the Rook.                     
               As I roughed out my ideas in clay, the pieces presented a certain “gravitas”. In contrast, I thought it might be fun to have the pawns present a contrary theme. I settled on monkeys. The main pieces of the set stare straight ahead; are grave, and dignified. The pawns (monkeys) on the other hand, are all extroverted individuals. Some monkeys make faces while others gesture wildly, moon each other, and basically; behave badly.
              I really liked what I had come up with so far, but was not sure what to do with the board to make it interesting. The idea of tracking animals through the jungle gave me an idea. I made stamps out of soapstone for all the pieces King through pawn. Then, when I had made all the individual tiles that would makeup the chess board , I laid these out and stamped them as though the pieces had been running back and forth all over the board. I liked the result. Some of the more rigid features of the game had become barely contained chaos.
Tree House Chess:
              Another opportunity presented itself when my friend Peter, announced that the second floor of his tree house would be dedicated to chess. I immediately thought that a chess set with a tree house theme could be “way cool”.  What was more, since the whole idea of a grown man building himself a tree house appeared to throw people off balance, I thought it might be interesting if what would happen if what I created was less obviously a chess set. What I hoped to do was to make something that visitors to the tree house would be drawn to purely by form and shape without first recognizing its purpose.
             In this case, the concept for the board, or table, came first, and the design of the pieces would come later.
             I had an image in my mind of each square of the chessboard at a slightly different level, supported from below, by a small-scale forest. The squares would be almost like the leaves of the diminutive trees. Mind you, figuring out how to do this provided a bit of a challenge, but in the end, it was just a question of time spent in the woods looking at branches. Eventually, I achieved the look I was going for; it just took many gluing and varnishing sessions. Like so many projects, the only real demands it made of me as a person, were the patience and discipline to keep at it.
               While working on the board, I began to think about the pieces. More complex than the Jungle Chess pieces, I wanted to stay with organic tree forms. My concern was that if I made all the pieces from branches, I still needed to distinguish the pieces from one another, as well as the two sides from one another. The solution I chose was to have the core of each chess piece made from a branch, or branches glued together; Faux cherry for the black pieces and Beech for the white. Where ornament was required, I would use acorns, pinecones, or bark. Where detailed ornament was required, I chose to use metal cut in leaf forms; silver for the white, and copper for the black.
               I think the end-result is a success. A game played on such a three dimensional board is full of surprises.

Wooden Toys and the Paddle-Bear

                 I have always loved making toys. Even as a child I found the process of making a toy was often more fun than playing with a store bought toy. This may also be due in part to my parents, who firmly believed that fun had a lot more to do with doing things, than purchasing things. As a little boy, my favorite toys were either ones that had been made for me by someone I knew, or were “creative” toys; blocks, paints, kites, drawing tools, and tinker toys. In any event, I was hooked, and still am. By the time my nephews and niece came along, I had a lot of experience, and now their home is filled with an embarrassing quantity of handmade toys.
                  Since the purpose of this site is to share creative ideas, I simply want to share some toy ideas and themes that have worked for me. I am not going to write long “how-to” articles, first because I am not a writer, which may be apparent, and second because there are already lots of people writing that kind of thing.  My hope is that by sharing some of my own toy ideas like minded readers may come up with ideas of their own.
                  Wood is perhaps my favorite medium for toy making. It is reasonably durable, accessible, and versatile. It can provide the qualities to make a fairly complex toy. For example; look at this bulldozer with caterpillar treads made of individual poplar cleats glued to canvas and made in my shop.

                  On the other hand some of my most successful and popular toys were made with nothing more than a folding camp saw, a pocket knife, and whatever kind of sticks came to hand. The paddle-bear is a case in point.

 I have made a lot of these over the years, mostly while on hiking, camping, or paddling trips. 
                  Made in three parts that lock together without glue they are fairly simple to make and can be used on dry land, in a car, in a tent, or they can just be held. They also float. Paddle-bears have been sent down streams, rivers, over waterfalls, and have been “lost at sea”. This last can be a little traumatic for the child to whom the bear belonged. However, not only can a replacement be quickly fashioned, but some comfort can be given when you explain to the child in question that, at some point, the missing paddle-bear will wash up on a beach to be found by some other child. Sometimes we make up stories about some of the adventures the little bear might have after it has been lost, and before it has been found. This idea can have such strong appeal that on several occasions I have been convinced to make paddle-bears for the expressed purpose of “releasing them into the wild” to be found by other children. Once, on a paddle trip, in the bay of Fundy, the children who “released” the bear into the wild actually sang ‘Born free’ as the bear drifted away on a four knot current towards Grand Manan Island, or possibly Portugal.

                   Pretty heavy stuff for a simple toy made out of sticks.

The Whole Bear Thing

                     The paddle-bear reminds me I need to explain the whole “bear” thing. Many toys need some sort of pilot, or driver. Years ago I discovered carving little human figures to put into various toys was way too hard. As a substitute I started putting simple animals in place of human operators. Cats, seals, dogs, and bears. Here is a catboat sailed by, naturally, two cats.

A tomcat fighter flown by…

For his birthday, I once made a pond yacht for my eldest nephew to sail with his grandfather in the toy boat pond in Central Park. As an after thought I added two little bears sailing the boat and painted “Bearable” on the transom of the yacht.

When the little yacht was unwrapped, my niece, who was at the time four-going on forty, announced; “Bears do not belong on boats”. When asked where bears belong, she answered with total certainty, “Bears”, she said, pausing for emphasis, “belong in the zoo”. This became a running joke between us, and since then I have been putting little bears in many of the toys that I make for her,and her brothers. Here are two bears driving a steam engine.

It may be harder to make out, but there are two bears here piloting this tug.

                   

The Tree House

A few years back a friend announced that he was going to build a tree house and that he was looking for help; who wouldn’t want to help? The concept that he started out with was a small platform in a tree with four walls, a roof and one window. What he ended up with was a two-storey timber frame tree house twenty two feet off the ground, with two decks, twenty one windows, a drawbridge, and a room dedicated to the playing of chess. It also took almost four years to build.

               What can I say? it was a blast. At least it was for me because I got to help, but was not paying the bills. You only have to look at it to see that Peter’s tree house is really cool and he, and his friends, (including me) had a LOT of fun building it.

                The project ended up being something inspirational, in part because a lot of really neat ideas came together really by themselves. For example there are no bolts or nails in the tree and a great deal of the structure was built of “found” or recycled material. I don’t think there was ever a very conscious effort to make this an environmentally friendly, or deliberately green, tree house, but I think Yankee thrift and pragmatism eventually led to the same place. The tree house is hung from cables run through PVC conduit through a large natural fork in the tree. The thinking was practical; the tree is the foundation therefore nothing should be done to damage the foundation, but the end result is still better for the tree.

                 Sometimes the challenge of putting the tree first resulted in a much more interesting design as well. There was a branch that was going to pass right through the chess room and rather than cut it off (it was a really nice branch) we built windows around it with canvas gaskets that keep out the weather but allow the branch to sway freely in the wind. It would have been much easier and been a lot less work to just cut off the branch, but the living branch running in one window and out the other is one of the best features of the second floor.

                Peter ended up writing a book about the whole project; Treehouse Chronicles. Two central themes of the book are to follow your dreams, or as Peter’s mother told him, “You need to put feet on your dreams, they are no good stuck between your ears”. The other is explained in the front cover of the book: “This is the story of what happens when adults decide to be kids again and they have tools and lumber”. The book was has also been fairly inspirational and has won seven national book awards. If you are interested, check out Peter’s tree house blog, or you can check out his book Treehouse Chronicles.

 

If you would like to read more about the treehouse, click on the “Tree house page”  or, “Tree house construction”.

The Boat

             The Boat is a ten ton work in progress. She is a Friendship Sloop built on the Maine coast in the later half of the 20^th century, a sister ship to a boat built in 1903. When we bought her she was only a dozen years old, but a lack of proper maintenance had led to a rapid decline. We bought her in 2000 (I say we because I co-own her with a family from Oregon).

             Over the next three years we sailed the boat in the summer and worked on it in the winter. By 2003 we had repaired all the damage due to lack of maintenance, put a new interior in the boat, and upgraded the systems.

             She has become a summer retreat for me and a source of winter projects, which in a way, is also a retreat for me. If you would like to read longer posts, see more pictures, or see more detail concerning the work we did on her go to “the boat” page.

Welcome

“Dovetails” is not devoted to a specific single theme. I hope to be writing about a number of subjects; from the adventures had on a wooden Friendship Sloop (both in the water and out), and the joys of making wooden toys for my nephews and niece, to a recent venture helping a friend build a massive, two-story tree house.

          I intend to post photographs and drawings of past projects that were fun, and current projects that have me challenged or exasperated. In the best case scenario, readers may get ideas from looking at the posts on this site and, I hope, leave me ideas too.

          The only theme is creativity, and although the subjects may vary from post to post, I hope they all fit together like…well you get it.