Let me tell you about my boat
I made a 15’ wood strip canoe out of Redwood. It is my masterpiece and one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life. And it continues to be every time I go for a paddle.
I will go through the build process in other posts. For now I would like to tell you how it came to be.
In the fall of 2014 I was working 60+ hours a week and, according to the health app on my iPhone, I was walking at least a half marathon everyday. You see, the factory I was working at is 50% larger than Disneyland - it is ginormous and I was routinely pacing between my production line to the machine shop back to the line to the loading dock to the lab to the conferences rooms, on and on. Needlessly to say when the weekend came I wanted nothing more than to melt into the couch. And so I did just that.
From the time Lee Corso put on a mascot’s head on College Gameday to hearing Joe Buck sign off on Sunday Night Football I moved only to crack a cold one or make nachos. I watched every minute of football that was broadcast. This was a glorious chapter in my life.
Monday would come, as it always does, and it was back to the grind. I had nothing to show for my brief reprieve from building robots. Resting in front of the tv did a poor job of resetting a stressful work week. It all blended together. Making stuff is a leisurely activity for me.
The house we were renting in Half Moon Bay had a 2 car garage and, it being California, we didn’t park cars in it. It was used for storage and laundry and to house the kegerator. Furthermore, I have a 100” projector screen. Why not mess around in the garage with the games on?! This is so obvious in retrospect but felt like a profound eureka moment at the time. The kind of realizations that only occur after months of therapy.
Ok. Step one, pick a project and get tools. I had a cordless drill and a hammer. I am handy but my woodworking experience begins and ends with making a Pinewood Derby car in Cub Scouts. Needed to start simple. A chess board! 64 squares, some glue, a few clamps. *aside: it is actually more straight forward than that. Take 4 strips of a light color and 4 of a dark, glue together alternating between the two. Then take that block and cross cut it 7 times to yield 8 strips. Flip over every over one, glue those together and bingo, chess board. All I needed was a Table Saw.
I called my dad to ask if he had advice on buying a table saw. Before he could dispense anything he asked a fair question,
“What are you thinking of making?”
“A chess board”
“Ooooooh. Pretty ambitious first project.”
The hell! It is just a serious of 90 degree cuts. The exact thing a Table Saw is designed for.
I have a great relationship with the ol’ man. But he is a father and I am a son and I couldn’t help but hold contempt for his lack of encouragement. If he thinks a chess board is an ambitious project, well, I’ll show him …
Around the same time I got into the TV Show Parks and Recreation. A character on the show, Ron Swanson played by Nick Offerman, concludes the show by hoping in his canoe and paddling away. That boat was flawless. An idea began to peculate.
Soon after I saw on Twitter that said the canoe in the show was built by the actor. And he had a YouTube series detailing the process. In them he demonstrates the steps outlined in the Bible of woodstrip canoe building - Canoecraft by Ted Moore.
I bought a copy. Read it cover to cover the afternoon it arrived. Read it three more times that week and decided - yup, I can do this. It was beyond my skill set, sure, because, well, I didn’t have a skill set. But the book is so beautifully put together that it breaks down this herculean task into small manageable tasks. What’s the says - How do you eat an elephant … one bite at a time.
March 22, 2015 - Bought a table saw
May 22, 2015 - Bought lumber for the support/assembly frame (i.e. the Strongback). THE BUILD HAD BEGUN
May 28, 2016 - Launched in Pillar Point Harbor
There are few greater joys in the world than accomplishing a long term goal.
