What a difference a day makes!

Yesterday the gang was outside pounding trunnels in their shirt sleeves and talking about starting framing today. The ground was bare, the temperature was comfortably above freezing. Then pow! overnight we got 25 centimetres of snow (that's 10 inches!) and the landscape is completely different. Not that it will stop Dave and co!

The craftsman's eye

It's a familiar gesture among artisans of countless disciplines

...that one-eyed examination of an angle or plane, double checked with the brush of a hand that, though calloused, is as sensitive as the most high tech of instrumentation. It can, and often does, lead to an adjustment of some sort, a refining and ultimately, the approval required to move on to the next task.

Or, if the gimlet eye is turned on you, it may mean it's time to stop taking pictures and let a fella get on with his work.

Our girls are growing

Until Dave and the gang start framing them up, it takes a little imagination to see the two sweet schooners these keels will become. Still, when you place a few photos together, as below, it's not hard to see the progress they've been making.

In this first shot you see in the foreground one of the keels lying upside down while the ballast keel is attached, while just behind it sits the second keel, upside right with her stern post attached, all of the deadwood fitted in around the ballast keel and the beginnings of the stem.

This next shot, below, shows Dave alongside the finished stem with the still inverted keel of the other schooner just visible in the background. It's still upside down, but if you look closely you can see the deadwood is being added.

Finally, this shot gives another perspective of the stem; one from which you can start to infer the future schooners' lines. Made of super strong and durable Osage Orange, which when planed and shaped produces those sunny yellow wood chips, the stems feature a traditional Lunenburg knuckle in the bow.

Of course what these photos don't show is the temperatures in which our gang has been working. While the sun is shining, it's been hovering around minus 10 degrees Celsius all week (that's around 14 degrees Fahrenheit). Not that they ever complain.

Sunny deadwood

Until working around Dave and Dan, I thought Deadwood was a television western. Well that's true but apparently it's also the name of wood that serves primarily as filler between other aspects of a boat's structure. And that's what the guys are working on in the pictures here.

The funny thing is that this deadwood, particularly the piece being worked on at right, has such a vibrant colour. It really sticks out on a day like this when the temperature is back above freezing but everything is that dull gray that tends to characterize Nova Scotia from December until April. Doesn't look dead at all, does it?

Ballast keels arrive

The sun is back out today but it's been a challenging week for getting work done outside. There were snowstorms Monday and again on Wednesday. It drove even our most hardcore guy (i.e. Dave) to work inside by the stove.

Still we managed to get the two ballast keels on site. You can see one of the 11,000 lb. mommas in the photos here. Bear in mind that the keel as shown at right has been flipped upside down. You can certainly get a good sense of how things will fit together.

Squaring off the lower stem

Happy New Year!

We enjoyed a bit of time off over the holidays. Not too much though. Dave wanted to take advantage of a few mild days, and some not-so-mild ones, between Christmas and New Year's, the latter arriving with a big snowstorm here.

When not able to work outdoors, Dave and his gang were busy lofting frames and making patterns.

There's something very special about the moulding loft. Just a few months ago this was nothing more than a large empty room on the third floor of our waterfront warehouse. Now it's like Mission Control but without all the technology required by NASA. It's here that Dave has laid down the lines from the half-model on which these two schooners will be built. The lines are drawn full size so that patterns can be made for the fabrication of frames.

At times, the loft has an almost church-like reverence. I think you can see it in the photo above. And of course, if things go off course, the language may well include a few terms that a minister might use!