Escaping the Deep Freeze (Long)
Jorge Casta�eda ~ East Penobscot Bay
>Attempting to escape the recent deep freeze I dug deep into a pile of photographs and found this one.
In Jan 14th it was -50 � F here with the wind chill factor, triggered by the picture, flash back to the opposite end of the scale, when the weather people then were talking about heat index, it was 100� F, a long hot day in a long hot summer. A few day earlier in a big wind, the jib traveler had snapped and almost took the cook away, she was tending the fore deck and my goal for the day was to fashion and install a new jib traveler.
It started at day brake, had to drive quite a distance to my friend's saw mill, I needed to find a stick suitable to make that spar and I figured that no lumber yard would have one 6" x 6" x 24' white oak. Upon arrival to the saw mill, I explained what was needed to the old man, showed him a picture of the vessel and he made many questions and finally we started to rummage many piles of wood, eventually he decided it was best to work with a green piece of wood because the spar had to be forced into a curve parallel to the deck and then we inspected many logs until he found one he liked, with the help of his sons, we took the log to the mill and he cut it. He marked one side and told me that side had to be on top, because the stick was to bow that way, that was what he was looking for when choosing the wood.
So after driving back to the vessel, having missed breakfast I went to town to have a bite, on the way there I spotted a hardware store and after a quick look around, I found a special, a brand new Millers Falls 9 for the whooping sum of $9.00, so I blew my money in that plane and had to go hungry, but happy.
The day was already hot by the time I had scribed lines to make the square into an octagon and then adzing away the waste made it even hotter, working in a public park and having a number of school teachers with their students around, answering questions while wielding an adze was not easy so had to recruit another crew member to do the talking and keep the people away from the work. By noon the stick was octagonal but very rough, then a 28" wooden plane came into play and improved things some, enough to scribe again and shoot for 16 sides, The amount to be removed was too small for the adze, so back to the 28" wooden plane, but it kept digging in too much, so then out it came the new 9" Millers Falls, it saved the day, and I was surprised how good it cut straight from the hardware store, it seems that it took forever to get to 16 sides and then to round, but by sunset, we had wrestled the spar into place...
Just like the old man said, the stick bowed in a few hours and I forgot to mention, he refused payment and donated the wood to the cause, claiming he had too much fun choosing the stick..
That spar was made using only a square, an adze, a 28" woody and a #4 plane, I also had a Record block plane, but did not use it much. Now I have some 100 planes and many other tools, and things seem to take quite a bit longer to get done, I wish I had some of that old energy left in me.
That was some 30 years ago.
Thanks for looking.
Jorge
