Vintage Rambler

Wearing my librarian hat yesterday, I asked a co-worker if she knew what a blog is. She said, “Yeah, isn’t it someone’s ramblings on the Internet?” I laughed and replied, “Yes. Perhaps you’d like to see my ramblings?”

A few months ago, I barely knew what a blog was. Now I write several and it seems that more and more of my time is consumed with the care and feeding of my blogs. To my dismay, Blonde in a Nutshell occasionally suffers neglect while I tend to others. Sometimes, desperate to post something on this blog, I’ll copy ramblings from one of my other blogs. So, with apologies, here goes:

“Progress on the boat has been slow lately because that thing called work keeps getting in the way. However, after the fiasco in Novato, I went to the tool sale at the fairgrounds and bought a workstation (some assembly required) which is a totally cool thingamajig that can double as a sawhorse. I’ve casted about for C-clamps and am discouraged at the utter dearth of them among my friends and relatives. But wait, there’s another fiasco waiting to happen. This weekend in Sebastopol there is a 'Vintage Wood Boat and Antique Swap.' My husband has warned me that this could be an entire swap meet populated by Bills and not to expect any great deals.

So far, I have ripped a 2x4 into long, thin strips for laminating with epoxy. Two pieces have to be laminated: the center frame and the forekeel. The ripping procedure was a particularly unpleasant one that involved a band saw and an artillery of curse words. I haven’t laminated yet, though, because first I have to rip more wood (more cursing), get the epoxy, and set everything up, making sure I have all the materials. A sixth sense tells me that the epoxy chapter of this story will include a lot of cursing, too.


Also, I have assembled the building jig, which is a ladder-type structure that lies horizontally and sits upon my new workstation. Feel free to admire both the jig and the workstation in the photo below. It is upon this ladder frame that I fasten the stations molds, which I finished a while back, and the center frame if I ever finish laminating it, and then begin building the boat.”



Update: Last Saturday, I called the phone number for the Vintage Boat Swap and the person who answered said the event was meager because a lot of vendors cancelled and if I was traveling a ways, not to bother. That was all the excuse I needed not to drive out to Sebastopol, but all day long I wondered if the guy said that as a joke and if, in fact, there were all kinds of great deals there that he didn’t want anyone else to find out about.

I ripped the other 2x4, which went well and with a minimum of cursing, but still have not laminated.

Yesterday, after I switched out of my librarian hat for my quilter hat, I had a long conversation with one of my quilting customers who turns out to be the daughter of an avid boatbuilder. She said she had spent the day sailing with her father in his newly launched 36-foot centerboard yawl. An octogenarian, he has just completed his eighteenth wooden boat. Thirty years ago, he built a stout 27-foot sailboat that he, his son and daughter sailed to Hawaii and back. I told her about my Nutshell Pram project, and she even knew the boat. In fact, her family owns a summer cottage on the coast of Maine, near the WoodenBoat school, from whence came the Nutshell Pram. The summer cottage is the ultimate home of the newly-launched yawl. Her family is living the life we want to live! She told me where her father builds boats, at the marina in San Rafael, and that I could go visit him anytime I want. Perhaps this weekend I will do that!

The weirdo weturns

When I arrived at Bill’s house that day, the first story he told me was about some people who had answered his ad, come to his house, and stolen items from him. I said, “That’s lousy,” and made a mental note that he’ll probably accuse me, too. After an hour of enduring his stories and then realizing that he had no intention of selling anything, I lost patience, set the clamps down on his band saw, and said, “Bill, I have to leave,” and literally ran to my car and sped away.

The next day, my friend and business partner, Kathy, received a phone call at the corporate headquarters of TopStitchers from an old man who said a blonde named Melissa had come to his house and stolen three clamps from him. Kathy had no idea what he was talking about. She coaxed more information out of him and determined that he meant Louisa, not Melissa, but told him that she found it hard to believe that her business partner was the type of person who would steal clamps from an old man. He insisted I had and that he was going to call the sheriff to investigate. She told him she thought it was a mistake, hung up, and went back to work.

A little while later, I went in to work, and moments after I walked through the door, the phone rang. Kathy answered. She talked and laughed and winked at me, then told me about the conversation. My new boatbuilding buddy Bill had found the clamps and I was exonerated. Kathy was relieved to know that I was not a crook.

Later, I told Cary the entire story. He became indignant that this man had called me a thief. He phoned him and said, “What kind of a kook are you?” Bill apologized to Cary, and later he called and apologized to me. I accepted, but wanted to know, “Why didn’t you just call and ask me where the clamps were?” He didn’t have a good answer for that, so I just said good-bye and thanks for calling. Then changed my phone number. Then drove down to Black Point at midnight, broke into Bill's shed and stole his clamps.

Just kidding! I stole the band saw instead.

The world is full of weirdos

This classified ad practically hollered at me from the pages of Latitude 38: “Pre-estate sale by owner. Boatbuilding tools, materials, fastenings, fittings, plans, books, magazines...I’m lazy and wish for geezer home.” I called the Novato phone number and talked to Bill, a cheerful man of about 110 who said he had plenty of clamps, sawhorses, and even a sheet of plywood that I could have.

Bubbling with excitement, I raced down to Black Point anticipating the treasures I would find at garage sale prices. Bill indeed had treasures, but garage sale prices were not part of the bargain. Mostly he wanted to deliver long-winded stories about every clamp, bevel gauge, and chisel in his workshop and then decided he didn’t really want to part with them. He had hundreds of C-clamps, but could let me have only three of them, at $15 apiece. Fifteen dollars each? Are you crazy? I had been thinking more along the lines of $15 for 15 clamps.

Was I interested in any books? In fact, I had been keeping an eye out for Howard Chapelle’s American Small Sailing Craft, a boatbuilding classic that is still in print. There was a copy of it on Bill’s bookshelf. “Would you sell me this one?” I asked. Long pause. “Don’t know if I can give that one up,” Bill said. I scanned the shelf again. “You have two copies of it,” I pointed out to him. Of course, he wanted $15 for that, too, even though he clearly had paid half that at a used book store.

As for the coveted mahogany plywood, he could only let it go for full market value, because after talking to me about the Nutshell Pram, he thought he might want to build a dinghy, too. Sure, Bill. And I’m going to build the Queen Mary.

Disheartened and disillusioned, I came home empty-handed. Cary tried to console me by pointing out that the boatbuilding world is full of antisocial weirdos. It’s not just the boatbuilding world, though. The whole world is full of antisocial weirdos, and they are all either running or responding to classified ads.

The Laminator

This week I did actual work on my boat. With a jigsaw, I cut out the station molds, which are plywood forms around which the boat is shaped and built, and cajoled Cary into planing them for me. Planing is right up there with sanding, which is right up there with watching paint dry. Unfortunately, planing is a big part of boatbuilding, so I’ll have to really hone my cajoling skills.

Today I worked on something called a laminating jig. There are two pieces - the forekeel and the midship frame - that are constructed from laminated strips of fir. The laminated pieces must be shaped a particular way, and to achieve that shape, I spent the entire day as follows:
1. Transferred the patterns for the forekeel and midship frame onto plywood.
2. Ripped a two-foot long piece of 2x4 in half, then cut about 20 triangular pieces of wood from those two lengths.
3. Made a run over to the creepy haunted house, namely Yardbirds, to buy screws with which to fasten the triangles to the plywood, only to find out I bought the wrong screws.
4. Made the screws work anyway. This involved creative use of a drill press.
5. Fastened the triangular wood pieces to the plywood along the patterns mentioned in #1. That's like saying, "Finished my master's degree in nuclear physics." Everything that could go wrong, did, and I had to try every drill bit in the house, never to find the right one and had to make another trip to the hardware store. For trip #2, I went to Rex Ace instead of Yardbirds because I can't deal with the Munsters at Yardbirds.

Now I am ready to laminate. Call me The Laminator. I'll be back, but first I must achieve a certain blood margarita level. It is Cinco de Mayo!