Personal Concerns and Editorials

I try to keep these postings light-hearted, but an editorial that appeared in the New York Times yesterday compels me to express some personal concerns. The editorial in question was written by Thomas L. Friedman, a gifted individual who I heard speak a few years ago at The University of Iowa. His editorial can be found by clicking here.

Friedman says it all far better than I can, but I want to say that I very much agree with his concerns about the growing divisiveness and bitterness in our country, which is too often fed by the cable news programs, various talk shows, a number of bitter extreme groups and individuals, and a certain past Vice President. I am also deeply disappointed in our elected officials and, specifically, in my own elected officials, such as Senators Grassley and Harkin. I respected that both of them would once take more centrist positions, represent Iowa's true core, and deal with issues in honorable ways. Lately, especially in the case of Senator Grassley, I hear them taking partisan positions only, distorting the truth, and misrepresenting facts. When they do this, they do not represent me. I dare say that most elected officials today worry more about their party and its position of power than they do about two important things: truly and honestly representing the people of the nation, and upholding the true ideals of our Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

I have begun to believe it true that there is a vast middle population that is being too quiet, that is not holding its elected officials accountable, and that fails to properly restrain those extremist groups and positions that may tear us apart. I hope we have not gone so far down this road that, like someone caught too deeply in a whirlpool, we cannot recover. I've not been good myself about writing to my elected officials or speaking out more about what I want. I think I should change in that regard. Maybe you can too. Also, I want to urge those who have opportunity to influence future generations to teach tolerance, open-mindedness, consideration, fairness and thoughtfulness. This country will not survive if we do not do this, or, if it does, it will not be the country I want to claim as my own.

Go back and click on the link I provided to the Friedman editorial and read it!

Ancient Wood

Warning: This is one of those stories about "things that Bill gets excited about but that others might not find so interesting."

Some time ago, I read the book A Splintered History of Wood: Belt Sander Races, Blind Woodworkers, and Baseball Bats. In about its first chapter, the book discusses sources and types of wood and introduced me to a wood called kauri. Kauri still grows in New Zealand and is protected by the government, but there are ancient kauri trees (30,000 to 50,000 years old, according to carbon dating) that can be extracted from peat bogs in New Zealand, dried, and cut into lumber. The extracted trees are enormous (some as big as redwoods). Here is a little video about such an extraction:

The wood is rare, of course, but because live trees are not cut down to make it available, it is not considered a threatened species, as many other woods are. Still, I understand some New Zealanders object to its export.

What makes the wood so interesting is that when finished, it has an almost luminescent property. When viewed from different angles, it shimmers and shows dark changing to golden and back again. A Splintered History of Wood informed me that the sole source of kauri in the United States is a company called Ancient Wood LTD in Ashland, WI. If you click here, you can learn more about the company and read about kauri, see examples of things made from the wood, see a little video that attempts to show the grain and luminescent nature of the grain, and even purchase wood, if you want (it is expensive!). Ashland is north of us, in a pretty area right along the south shore of Lake Superior (very near the Apostle Islands).

So, on Thursday, Kathie and I traveled about 70 miles to Ashland to visit the company. I wanted to see the wood, see some of the projects they do with the wood, and maybe buy a board for some special projects.

Some of these pictures are a little blurry, because we weren't careful enough about letting the camera focus--sorry about that. Nevertheless, I thought you might find them interesting. To start, here I am standing alongside a 40 foot long board of kauri. The wood really doesn't give off its luminescent look until it is finished.

The company does special order projects with the wood. Many of them involve use of interesting pieces of burl from the lower area of the trunks. They often finish such pieces by covering them with transparent epoxy. This picture begins to show off some of the beauty of the grain.

This piece was in process. They had filled holes in the piece with a collection of interesting stones from Lake Superior and covered them with epoxy. In a next step, the entire piece would be covered with epoxy. Such pieces are then mounted on some type of pedestal to make a coffee or end table.

This one is going to an office somewhere in Chicago.

They call this one the Wisconsin piece.

This table has kauri in the center and seven or eight other woods around the edges. The pedestals in the background show the kauri grain quite well.

I ended up buying a few pen blanks and one board, about 10" wide and six feet long. There may be a Christmas present or two or three or four hiding in that board. Not everyone has something made from a board that may have come from a 50,000 year old tree!

Visits

Our good friends David and Donna were here to visit us for a few days recently. In addition to some fishing outings, we watched some movies (most notably, Frost & Nixon and The Reader), tried out a new restaurant for breakfast, and enjoyed evenings on the deck. We guys tried to even the score of games of Hand & Foot, but alas, the ladies managed to beat us two games to one. That was an improvement, as the first time we ever played, they beat us about a bazillion games to one or two.

David sent me this picture of us which he took during their visit.

Since their departure, we have been out fishing a couple of times. Larger Crappie are starting to bite, and so we are having some good luck with them. Our neighbor invited us out with him Saturday mid-day, and we were introduced to several more good spots for Crappie. Kathie had some luck fishing for Bass out on the river near our home yesterday afternoon, while I worked on my 5000-piece puzzle. You may recall I started this puzzle around the 4th of July. See this earlier posting for details and a picture of the puzzle just out of the box. Here is how it looks now, with maybe 5/8 of it completed.

There is a lesson in planning ahead here. I naively thought it would fit on this table, but as you can see, one of the puzzle's dimensions exceeds the size of the table. So, I purchased a thin sheet of aluminum and rigged up a sort of extension. Thinking of the extra capacity Dad sometimes added to his wagons by adding vertical boards on the wagon sides, Dad might have referred to my approach as "sideboards."

Grandsons

I don't mean to be partial to grandsons over granddaughters, but I did get to spend some extra time with Anders for his birthday and then also to see Henry as a ring bearer in Liz's wedding last weekend. So, I have to post a few pictures of them.

Sandy already posted a picture of Anders with his new blocks set, which I made for him for his first birthday. Here is another of him as he begins to play with them. At this time, playing with them seems to mean "throw them out of the box."

I take this expression to mean that he is pleased with the blocks.

But then...back to pitching them out of the box.

And here is that other handsome boy-about-town after quickly donning most of his tuxedo for the wedding. In addition to the jacket, there was a little adjusting and tucking to do, but I know you will agree he's looking good. That hunter green color was an excellent choice! Green is my favorite color.

Timber Framing With My Son

(Warning: Lots of pictures. Fairly long posting.)

Very recently, I enjoyed a very special ten days with son Will. He had signed up for a class at the North House School (click on the name to learn more) in Grand Marais on timber framing. His goals were to learn timber framing skills and to prepare all the timbers necessary to build a sauna for his lake property in the process. He had asked me to be his assistant, and I was delighted to accept. Here is the project we worked on and finished together. (Sometime next summer, Will will prepare a foundation and then invite a group of us to assist in assembling the timbers and erecting the structure. Subsequently, he will apply exterior and interior walls, doors, windows, etc.)

There were four groups enrolled in the class. Three of them are receiving an initial orientation from instructor Peter here. The fourth team arrived a day later. Other groups built a storage shed with a loft for their grandchildren to enjoy, a porch addition for a timber-framed house built in a prior class, and a room addition for a timber-framed house built in a prior class.

One of the first lessons was on timber selection. There are lots of things to consider when choosing the timbers for such structures. You have to take the locations of knots into account, and there may be defects such as checks (cracks), shakes (separation along growth rings), or other issues to plan around.

Although many tools were familiar to us, there were some surprises. I'd never previously seen these large circular saws, which can cut to a depth of 6" as opposed to the usual 3" or so. Frankly, I found these saws a little intimidating, but Will really mastered using them to cut good square ends.

Here is Will moving one of our first timbers into the shop. That is Lake Superior in the background. We worked beside the lake the entire week! Note the handy cart, which made moving these heavy timbers quite easy. This particular one probably weighed in at 300 pounds or so.

Naturally, we had to get a photo of us near the school sign.

Perhaps the most demanding aspect of the work is measuring. We were expected to get each timber, for which we had detailed drawings, and its associated tenons, mortises, and other cuts positioned to very precise specifications. Peter taught us many techniques and the use of some interesting measuring tools and expected measurements not to vary more than a 1/32". If you do this all correctly, then the finished timbers should all fit together perfectly at the final location.

We used a tool called a chain mortiser to cut mortise slots. You can think of it as being like a tiny chain saw mounted on a special vise, which you plunge down into the timber. After using this tool, we cleaned up each mortise with large framing chisels until exact 1-1/2" widths and proper depths were achieved. (We made lots and lots of sawdust during the class!)

Here is proof that Will mastered that big circular saw. We wore hearing and eye protection at all times.

The first evening, the school threw a "pizza potluck", which involved their providing the pizza dough and everyone in the various classes bringing toppings to share. It was a nice get-to-know-each-other event.

As Will is already a very experienced pizza maker, I asked him to make my crust for me.

I added my own toppings.

Then the school director baked them in a hot brick oven that they had been firing all day. It was something like 600º inside, so the pizzas baked within a few minutes.

The next day we were back to measuring and laying out the individual timbers.

Here is the school as seen from its dock on the lake. The buildings on the right were prior timber framing projects by introductory classes. Will's class was different in that he actually ended up with a completed structure of his own.

This structure was to be auctioned off by the school at a later date. The red building behind it is the shop in which we worked each day.

This photo offers a closeup of the kinds of joinery we did. We learned the terminology for the timbers too: posts are topped by plates with braces used to strengthen and square the structures and girts joining the bents that make up cross sections of the structure. I couldn't help but think about the barn on the farm where I was raised. That barn was made this way.

This pile is a completed set of plates and posts from our first couple of days of work.

Across the courtyard from us, a blacksmithing class was underway.

Mark and Susan were building a porch to add to the cabin they made last year.

Paul and Tracy were building a one room addition for their cabin.

On Wednesday afternoon, Peter had a half day off, so we decided to use that time to haul some of the timbers we had finished up to Will's lake property.

We ended up making four total trips up there over the course of the week because of the weight limits of my pickup. The first two trips involved moving three 16' plates and several posts.

Will has studied timber framing for quite awhile in advance of the class and is interested in using some of the old tools that were traditionally involved in the trade. He bought this antique boring machine and tried it out, making one entire timber strictly with it and hand tools (chisels, slicks, planes, etc.).

The boring machine is a rather ingenious device, which cuts in a strictly perpendicular way.

We used a sliding miter saw to cut the 45º angles on all the braces. Will also eventually cut a nice curve on the side of each one.

I cut some of the tenons on the ends of braces with this band saw.

This stack represents the complete set of timbers that we manufactured during the week and which will make the structure appearing in the drawing at the beginning of this post. This was taken after the last of them had been hauled to his lake property.

We covered them with tarps, where they now await next year's trips back to the lake to prepare the foundation. I really look forward to helping put this together and raise it, especially after having been involved in helping to make all the timbers. What a fun class this was and what a great opportunity to do something together with my son!

East Coast Trip

We recently spent seven days on a trip to eastern locations (five days involved driving!). The primary motivation was to attend a wedding reception for Jessica and Mike at Mike's parents home. We decided to take advantage of the trip to visit friends in New Jersey as well and to see my sister and brother-in-law at their convenient midpoint location in Ohio. Somehow, I failed to take any pictures at the reception or at my sister's home, but I can tell you a bit about our visits in New Jersey and to Harpers Ferry, WV, which is near Mike's parents home.

We visited good friends David and Robert at their second home in Highlands, NJ. Mostly, we just "hung out" and relaxed, but David, Kathie and I did go for a morning stroll. The Highlands bridge is being rebuilt, and I knew that grandson Henry would want to see the crane, so I took some shots of that. If you look closely, you can see David and Kathie in the lower right corner as they study the crane.

The old draw bridge is being replaced by twin higher spans that will allow water vessels to pass below without traffic being stopped.

David and Kathie posed for me near an old anchor.

Then, David and I took a turn.

Finally, one of Kathie and me to make all combinations complete.

Above David and Robert's home are the twin lights of Navasink, about which you can read more here. We have toured these famous twin lights in the past. They are housed in a gorgeous old stone building, and there is a museum with lots of information about Fresnel lenses and other lighthouse lore.

A little further along our walk, we paused to look at the New York City skyline across the water to the north of Highlands.

Here is a view from their living room looking east across their deck and out into the Atlantic Ocean. The deck is a wonderful place to hot tub, enjoy a drink or a meal or the evening breezes, and to see the night sky and passing ships.

One evening, the moon rose above the ocean and was a bright red/orange color. I attempted to capture the sight, but the time exposure was tricky, so the quality of the image is poor. Most of the distant lights are party boats or fishing boats out in the Atlantic.

Robert prepared an outstanding meal of shrimp, scallops, and couscous, which we enjoyed on the deck.

The next two days were spent in Maryland at Mike's parents home. Kathie and I took advantage of a free morning to visit the Harpers Ferry National Park. This small, historic community is in a spectacular geologic and geographic location at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers. Mountains and hills in the Appalachian range rise on all sides of the rivers and the town.

A park volunteer offered us a walking tour, which we thoroughly enjoyed. It was hot that day--in the low 90s.

Harpers Ferry has, not surprisingly, flooded many times.

Here is the original main street.

I knew of Harpers Ferry's Civil War involvement, but there is much more history associated with the community as well. Lewis and Clark did part of their outfitting there. The many factories and mills that were once there were the site of the original introduction of interchangeable parts for manufactured items, and the town hosted a school/college for freed black persons after the war.

Of course, the most famous and well-known aspect of Harpers Ferry's history was the John Brown raid that preceded the Civil War by about 18 months. This spot marks the location of the building in which the abolitionist and his sons and others tried to hold out against the town and the army. He had come there to attempt to take control of the armory and its cache of weapons in order to build up an army aimed at defeating slavery.

This is the actual building in which that holdout took place. It was moved to a different location for various reasons, but the intent is to finally relocate it to the original historic spot just about a block away. Brown's efforts failed when Colonel Robert E. Lee (then a Union soldier) led a company of marines to Harpers Ferry to overpower and take him prisoner. Brown was later hanged by the Commonwealth of Virginia for treason. Harpers Ferry and all of what is now West Virginia was then still a part of Virginia.