Lay Day
Gray low skies drop
Weekend rain, warmer
Than workday rain for
Construction trades,
Colder for desk trades.
It clings on the fall
To standing rigging,
Stainless cable tautly
Faithful, then rills
Down and down – what
Miniscule, complex
Currents hum in the
Descent along the
Spirals? – to spill
Across adamantine
Bronze and stainless
Fittings, flood the deck,
And exit scuppers,
Homecoming to the
Bay.
Abraxas fidgets at her
Docklines, nudges her
Pig-snout tough
Bumpers, pulls and
Relaxes forgiving
Nylon fibers, doing
Nothing more than
Enduring. Until
Her skipper arrives,
Unable to stay away
Too long, and clambers
Aboard, unbuttons her
Tenderly, enters.
Untouched rain-beaded
Sailcovers, untouched
Shroud still mourning the
Holy wheel and binnacle.
A lay day.
Nautical term: day
Without necessity to
Nose out through chop,
No gray heroics,
Weather-cancelled.
“It’s not dangerous
To sail,” the Prudent
Mariner insists,
“It’s dangerous to
Sail no matter what.”
So the skipper reminds
Himself that he could
Sail. He could. But
Prudence trumps
Possibility. And he
Lights the bulkhead
Stove to hiss and flame
Merrily behind its
Oven-glass firebox
Port, yellow dancing
Of diesel combustion
At a low order of
Utility but filling
The familiar saloon
With grateful warmth.
For projects, chores,
Repetitive, comforting
Checks, new catalogue
Schemes of stowage,
The dream of even
More miraculous
Software. Radar, GPS,
Sounder, chart display
Unawakened.
No sane, no bright,
Will grant kindness
To objects. Only
Romantics observe
That fidgeting has
Become rocking,
Enduring became
Protection, and
Abraxas could. It
Could. If the warmed
And occupied skipper
Breathed, thought,
Deemed an order.
Jan Adkins
6 March 2011
Novato, CA
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
Himself is grateful to Chris Northcutt for buying a splendid 37' cutter and encouraging him to crew often. It's not the Bay he knows but it's sailing, and Chris is a skillful skipper who questions everything. This questioning fascinates and nourishes an adventure side for Himself. He needs that adventure quotient in his life or he gets stale and cranky.
Showing posts with label Dolphin club. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dolphin club. Show all posts
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Monday, June 7, 2010
MARCHING BEHIND THE SAINTS, WITH PARASOL
I DON'T GET INTO THE CITY, MUCH. True, I often scuttle in on Tuesday nights to cook for the Dolphin Club but that’s boats, an obsession that overrides my obsession with staying put. But last Sunday afternoon I took a special excursion.
I play tennis with a friend, Neal Vahle, a writer. Neal is 76 and still wallops me on the court. He’s also a deep old file, a thinker and a theologian who lived for several years in a Wisconsin monastery. I know, I didn’t think they bothered with monasteries there but took stark Lutheran doom straight, by the book, because simply keeping warm in the winter occupied so much effort. Jesuitical contemplation on alternate theory might have slowed them down long enough to freeze to death.
Neal and I were talking about raising children with spiritual values in a secular age. Saturday morning at temple or Sunday morning at church is as rare as rolling hoops and knickerbockers, nowadays. How should my grandsons Max and Lucas be raised to have spiritual values? more importantly, how can they become part of the six millennium heritage that carries so much of our core culture? They might wander away from the powerful river of Judeo-Greek, Christian-Roman, Renaissance-Protestant stories, values, fables, metaphors and history that floats us today, makes us who we are. In tossing away the shallowness and frequent hypocrisy of contemporary churches, liberal parents are almost literally tossing the baby out with the bathwater.
I think about this often. Neal and I talk about it sitting on the bench when serves change. So Neal suggested that I attend a “fellowship service” at the Unitarian Church in San Francisco to hear Doug Fitch speak. Doug is a small, wiry black man with enormous and expressive hands, long-famous as a spell-binding orator, and for many years the minister at Grace Church in the City. Fitch left Grace because there is a mandatory retirement age of 70. After he left, a band of a hundred or so folks began using the Unitarian Church as a Sunday-afternoon venue for a non-denominational spiritual gathering. That's as close to religion as they choose to describe it. So now the gentle spellbinder, born into fundamentalist evangelical faith, now calling on his involvement in Eastern meditation and traditions, holds forth at this odd gathering of Unitarians, Jews, Buddhists, lapsed Catholics, loose Lutherans, and even (so I’m told) some Muslims.
It was a wonderful experience. There was a stunning choir, theatrically skillful, with a young, electric choirmaster. They were backed by a band (puh-lease) of keyboard, drums, trumpet and electric bass. The mix was remarkably black for a San Francisco gathering, almost half. The choir reflected this proportion, which was fortunate because the three black basses were sonorous and emphatic, especially when the choir sang some African chants in Swahili – or some dark continent langridge – from the surprisingly strong Christian tradition in large parts of Africa. Amazing.
We sang one hymn but it didn’t count as a Sunday church song since it was “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Loud and lusty, it was no more go-to-meeting than the second-liners returning from the graveyard, twirling parasols behind a New Orleans funeral. A lot of clapping. Some hands waving in the air, a joyous noise. We didn’t have that at the Thoburn Memorial Methodist Church in St. Clairsville, Ohio. Nothing close to it. Sigh.
I can’t call Fitch’s talk a lecture or a discourse. No. It was a sermon. No talk about religion, no mention of Jesus. These folks are anti-Trinitarian, viewing Father, Son and Holy Ghost as a philosophic mischief perpetrated by Constantine in the 5th C. That is, they approach God through the intellectual side door. Of course the sermon had no Bible verse. But, crikey, the rolling rhythms of great religious oratory swept everyone along. We heard the unmistakable notes of Martin Luther King’s Pentecostal heritage – repetition, rhythm, sudden changes of pitch and volume, calling out and asking response, loud exhortation and quiet reflection, shifting from the intimately personal to the abstract whole.
And how could any speech from a pulpit be a lecture if it had (mirabile dictu) an Amen Corner. Yes. No shit. A running basso continuo from a few male members of the choir sitting on the aisle: “Yes. Yes! Tell it. Oh no! Amen. Amen. Yes, brother. Speak the word. Mm-MM! [This last an admonitory expression of anger and disappointment at injustice, obviously the work of the anti-Trinitarian, Satan-less, abstract devil.] DO tell! We hear it. We feel it. We know it. With you now. Yes, brother.” It’s appropriate that the choir members constituted the Amen Corner because it became obvious to me that good Amen-ing is closely akin to scat-singing, a skill that sounds casual and easy to any singer who hasn’t tried it. I was forced to admit that I didn’t have the experience or skill to become a competent or even an unembarrassing Amen-er. Sorry.
Fitch. The little man filled up the vast space under the Gothic hammer beams and inside the colorful, geometric, unreligious but inescapably religious stained-glass, above the unnoticed hard wooden pews. Oh, yes. Tell it. Mm-MM! His body language had expression, authority, and a mime’s wit. He plied the skillfully subdued but operatic magic of his dancing arms and hands. His flashing palms were pinkish orange in contrast to his weathered tobacco complexion. His modest, light suit suggested a boardroom but Fitch revealed a lion chewing on the horse-haunch of a premise. And we listened. We hear it. We feel it. With you now.
It wasn’t empty oratory but a logical, well-built discourse on the importance of continual learning, a constant opening of viewpoint through education in any form in life. “More learning, more life” was the theme but it twined around the critical role of tragedy and defeat in human learning, the regrettable but indispensable tutor of grief, the place of frustration and anger, the path with many thorns leading to the loveliest views. There were many “Amens” from Fitch as affirmations: “This I believe.” There was confession and humility, the little man vaulting above us but remaining one of us – ignorant as we were, blindsided as many times as we have been. He was, he assured us, determined not only to learn all his life but to live a long life (“I intend to reach ninety-nine years. Oh, yes,” to applause) and to savor every glittering drop of it.
This was no Happy Meal Sunday treat with fries. Indeed, it was strenuous in a way. I can’t imagine anyone who could remain a spectator, there. The pulse of spiritual stirring was so involving and strong that we ran to keep up with it. We sorted through old fears and freed pent-up desires. We centered ourselves in silence but we did so as a body of humans together. It was intellectual work.
This community of striving for quiet clarity may be something we lack in a secular life. It’s easy to grow narcissistic when you live with your own echoes. Quiet meditation – which could be called “centering” or “prayer” or even more casual reflection – is not the same experience as solitary meditation. Somehow it draws more amperage from you.
There was one familiar church artifact: the collection. These folks pay the band, support the choir, rent the hall, subsidize Doug Fitch’s enormous labor of preparing his “sermon.” They’re also politically and socially active, righteous San Francisco liberals supporting all the initiatives of justice, peace and diversity that damn near save the Californian Spirit from triviality. So the collection, counted and notated by my painstaking friend Neal, is honest and painless. We got a band, after all. The bass guitarist looked profoundly bored and was doubtless looking toward some livelier gig with more women in less, so he should be paid for his time. And, hell, it probably touched a part of him. After all, California’s mission system was based on paid converts.
Afterward there was the familiar milling crowd noshing on potluck brownies, cakes, nibblies and (Fitch's favorite, we were warned to save some for him) lemon bars. Very nice people. I placed them in the same drawer as my real, kind, jolly Dolphin Club friends.
It was altogether nourishing, refreshing, fertilizing, joyful. I’m ignoble enough to state that I managed to fall in love with every female member of the choir. Oh, yes. Tell it. And no one at my college bar would believe that I could someday moon from actual church pews over a speckled-pup cute woman who would in a more ecclesiastical setting be called a “deaconess.” Oh yes, brother. Speak it. In my defense this certainly had much to do with reawakening spiritual banks dormant in me for years. Amen. Or I may be merely a dirty old man whose shame has eroded sufficiently that I can admit these things. Mm-MM!
Altogether a wonderful time. It couldn’t be better, even with fireworks. First and third Sundays of the month. With you now, brother.
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
Anything that gets himself out of the studio can't be all bad. And this was a therapeutic event. It had a high mensch-ratio and a low piety score. Not bad for Sunday in a church of any kind. About education, I can't fear for himself. He's compulsive about learning damn near anything, and he tries mightily, with his limited tools, to string everything together in a logical way. Given the reports of low senility rates for scholarly nuns, we hope this constant, bubbling mental activity will fight off Alzheimer's. This would be an especially serious malady in my already odd friend because we couldn't see the symptoms for years.
I play tennis with a friend, Neal Vahle, a writer. Neal is 76 and still wallops me on the court. He’s also a deep old file, a thinker and a theologian who lived for several years in a Wisconsin monastery. I know, I didn’t think they bothered with monasteries there but took stark Lutheran doom straight, by the book, because simply keeping warm in the winter occupied so much effort. Jesuitical contemplation on alternate theory might have slowed them down long enough to freeze to death.
Neal and I were talking about raising children with spiritual values in a secular age. Saturday morning at temple or Sunday morning at church is as rare as rolling hoops and knickerbockers, nowadays. How should my grandsons Max and Lucas be raised to have spiritual values? more importantly, how can they become part of the six millennium heritage that carries so much of our core culture? They might wander away from the powerful river of Judeo-Greek, Christian-Roman, Renaissance-Protestant stories, values, fables, metaphors and history that floats us today, makes us who we are. In tossing away the shallowness and frequent hypocrisy of contemporary churches, liberal parents are almost literally tossing the baby out with the bathwater.
I think about this often. Neal and I talk about it sitting on the bench when serves change. So Neal suggested that I attend a “fellowship service” at the Unitarian Church in San Francisco to hear Doug Fitch speak. Doug is a small, wiry black man with enormous and expressive hands, long-famous as a spell-binding orator, and for many years the minister at Grace Church in the City. Fitch left Grace because there is a mandatory retirement age of 70. After he left, a band of a hundred or so folks began using the Unitarian Church as a Sunday-afternoon venue for a non-denominational spiritual gathering. That's as close to religion as they choose to describe it. So now the gentle spellbinder, born into fundamentalist evangelical faith, now calling on his involvement in Eastern meditation and traditions, holds forth at this odd gathering of Unitarians, Jews, Buddhists, lapsed Catholics, loose Lutherans, and even (so I’m told) some Muslims.
It was a wonderful experience. There was a stunning choir, theatrically skillful, with a young, electric choirmaster. They were backed by a band (puh-lease) of keyboard, drums, trumpet and electric bass. The mix was remarkably black for a San Francisco gathering, almost half. The choir reflected this proportion, which was fortunate because the three black basses were sonorous and emphatic, especially when the choir sang some African chants in Swahili – or some dark continent langridge – from the surprisingly strong Christian tradition in large parts of Africa. Amazing.
We sang one hymn but it didn’t count as a Sunday church song since it was “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Loud and lusty, it was no more go-to-meeting than the second-liners returning from the graveyard, twirling parasols behind a New Orleans funeral. A lot of clapping. Some hands waving in the air, a joyous noise. We didn’t have that at the Thoburn Memorial Methodist Church in St. Clairsville, Ohio. Nothing close to it. Sigh.
I can’t call Fitch’s talk a lecture or a discourse. No. It was a sermon. No talk about religion, no mention of Jesus. These folks are anti-Trinitarian, viewing Father, Son and Holy Ghost as a philosophic mischief perpetrated by Constantine in the 5th C. That is, they approach God through the intellectual side door. Of course the sermon had no Bible verse. But, crikey, the rolling rhythms of great religious oratory swept everyone along. We heard the unmistakable notes of Martin Luther King’s Pentecostal heritage – repetition, rhythm, sudden changes of pitch and volume, calling out and asking response, loud exhortation and quiet reflection, shifting from the intimately personal to the abstract whole.
And how could any speech from a pulpit be a lecture if it had (mirabile dictu) an Amen Corner. Yes. No shit. A running basso continuo from a few male members of the choir sitting on the aisle: “Yes. Yes! Tell it. Oh no! Amen. Amen. Yes, brother. Speak the word. Mm-MM! [This last an admonitory expression of anger and disappointment at injustice, obviously the work of the anti-Trinitarian, Satan-less, abstract devil.] DO tell! We hear it. We feel it. We know it. With you now. Yes, brother.” It’s appropriate that the choir members constituted the Amen Corner because it became obvious to me that good Amen-ing is closely akin to scat-singing, a skill that sounds casual and easy to any singer who hasn’t tried it. I was forced to admit that I didn’t have the experience or skill to become a competent or even an unembarrassing Amen-er. Sorry.
Fitch. The little man filled up the vast space under the Gothic hammer beams and inside the colorful, geometric, unreligious but inescapably religious stained-glass, above the unnoticed hard wooden pews. Oh, yes. Tell it. Mm-MM! His body language had expression, authority, and a mime’s wit. He plied the skillfully subdued but operatic magic of his dancing arms and hands. His flashing palms were pinkish orange in contrast to his weathered tobacco complexion. His modest, light suit suggested a boardroom but Fitch revealed a lion chewing on the horse-haunch of a premise. And we listened. We hear it. We feel it. With you now.
It wasn’t empty oratory but a logical, well-built discourse on the importance of continual learning, a constant opening of viewpoint through education in any form in life. “More learning, more life” was the theme but it twined around the critical role of tragedy and defeat in human learning, the regrettable but indispensable tutor of grief, the place of frustration and anger, the path with many thorns leading to the loveliest views. There were many “Amens” from Fitch as affirmations: “This I believe.” There was confession and humility, the little man vaulting above us but remaining one of us – ignorant as we were, blindsided as many times as we have been. He was, he assured us, determined not only to learn all his life but to live a long life (“I intend to reach ninety-nine years. Oh, yes,” to applause) and to savor every glittering drop of it.
This was no Happy Meal Sunday treat with fries. Indeed, it was strenuous in a way. I can’t imagine anyone who could remain a spectator, there. The pulse of spiritual stirring was so involving and strong that we ran to keep up with it. We sorted through old fears and freed pent-up desires. We centered ourselves in silence but we did so as a body of humans together. It was intellectual work.
This community of striving for quiet clarity may be something we lack in a secular life. It’s easy to grow narcissistic when you live with your own echoes. Quiet meditation – which could be called “centering” or “prayer” or even more casual reflection – is not the same experience as solitary meditation. Somehow it draws more amperage from you.
There was one familiar church artifact: the collection. These folks pay the band, support the choir, rent the hall, subsidize Doug Fitch’s enormous labor of preparing his “sermon.” They’re also politically and socially active, righteous San Francisco liberals supporting all the initiatives of justice, peace and diversity that damn near save the Californian Spirit from triviality. So the collection, counted and notated by my painstaking friend Neal, is honest and painless. We got a band, after all. The bass guitarist looked profoundly bored and was doubtless looking toward some livelier gig with more women in less, so he should be paid for his time. And, hell, it probably touched a part of him. After all, California’s mission system was based on paid converts.
Afterward there was the familiar milling crowd noshing on potluck brownies, cakes, nibblies and (Fitch's favorite, we were warned to save some for him) lemon bars. Very nice people. I placed them in the same drawer as my real, kind, jolly Dolphin Club friends.
It was altogether nourishing, refreshing, fertilizing, joyful. I’m ignoble enough to state that I managed to fall in love with every female member of the choir. Oh, yes. Tell it. And no one at my college bar would believe that I could someday moon from actual church pews over a speckled-pup cute woman who would in a more ecclesiastical setting be called a “deaconess.” Oh yes, brother. Speak it. In my defense this certainly had much to do with reawakening spiritual banks dormant in me for years. Amen. Or I may be merely a dirty old man whose shame has eroded sufficiently that I can admit these things. Mm-MM!
Altogether a wonderful time. It couldn’t be better, even with fireworks. First and third Sundays of the month. With you now, brother.
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
Anything that gets himself out of the studio can't be all bad. And this was a therapeutic event. It had a high mensch-ratio and a low piety score. Not bad for Sunday in a church of any kind. About education, I can't fear for himself. He's compulsive about learning damn near anything, and he tries mightily, with his limited tools, to string everything together in a logical way. Given the reports of low senility rates for scholarly nuns, we hope this constant, bubbling mental activity will fight off Alzheimer's. This would be an especially serious malady in my already odd friend because we couldn't see the symptoms for years.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
CLINKER-BUILT
Every Tuesday evening at the Dolphin Club we give the pulling boats some care – repairing, sanding, varnishing, rebuilding. After we work three hours or so, we all eat together in the boat house at long tables.
A big crowd tonight, but not because it's Fat Tuesday and one of the members has made jambalaya. Big doings in the shop. Word has gone out that the Club's boatwright, Jon Belinski, is installing five new ribs in one of the older pulling boats. This is a rare demonstration of antique skills and methods, requiring teamwork, timing, speed and finesse. It's more than woodworking.
The ribs begin as tough locust staves. To bend this adamant wood into the fair curve of a rib, it must be cut to its cross-section and steamed in a long, closed, hissing iron pipe for half an hour. The locust ribs emerge at 200°F+ as limp as noodles. Limp for only moments. We will pluck ribs out one at a time with thick gloves and push them into the boat's inner shape, working feverishly before the inner heat dissipates and the locust stubbornness revives.
Contemporary sport boats are, in the old Massachusetts boatyard phrase, "built by the mile and cut off to suit." They're mass produced. You won't see ribs being steamed unless you haunt a cranky New England shipwright's shop peopled with wood-heads devoted to traditional (read "lavishly expensive") wooden boats built more carefully than a Hermann Miller coffee table.
We walk through the steps we will take in dumb-show first, noting where our feet will go, what will be in the way, who must step back, who must come forward. Everyone must work fast and in close concert, because the locust will be flexible from the steam box for less than a minute.
We take special care of these exquisite craft but they endure. Some are older than any of the people who work on them. And because why, mate? Because these 'ere boats is clinker-built, as light as eggshells but tough as pigs' noses. They are San Francisco variations on the Whitehall model. This means that they are rowing boats with a distinct and delicately cupped shaped, a "wineglass" transom (aft end), and that they're very light for their size, built in the ancient "clinker" construction.
"Clinker" is an Old English cognate of "clencher," which indicates that the boat is constructed of thin, overlapping planks of a light, flexible wood (in this case, white cedar) "clenched" to thin ribs with copper rivets. This fastening mode is a very old usage that binds more tightly than nails and more securely than screws. Indeed, nails and screws wouldn't have much to "grab" because the stock is so thin. The soft-as-cheese cedar is milled thin, not much thicker than 1/4" and about three inches wide. The ribs are only 5/8" wide and about 1/2" thick. While they're still whippy and hot, we will drill through and secure a rib, the lower part of an overlapping cedar strake (one of the curving horizontal planks) and the upper part of the next strake.
Now. A rib is whisked out of the steam pipe, slammed into the boat, bent against the soft interior curve of the strakes and forced under some of the boat's inner structure. Held hard, holes are immediately drilled, time management and tool quickness.
As soon as the holes are made a copper riveting nail is tapped through them. The "nail" is square in section to grip the wood more tightly. A round copper washer – called a "burr" – is forced over the square nail with a special riveting tool; it's like a chisel with a flat, blunt end drilled with a hole for the nail to occuply, so that whacking the burr down onto the nail forces the rib and strakes together. When the riveting tool is taken away, the nail is snipped off just above the burr and, while one partner "bucks" (holds a heavy iron on the nailhead end to prevent it from being driven away), the other shapes the soft copper with a small ball-peen hammer. This is the hammer with one flat head and one round head, made specifically for work like this – shaping the "mushroom" with the round head is called "peening". The copper is so malleable that it mushrooms over the burr and each stroke of the shaping ball-peen tightens the assembly.
It seems like intolerably fussy and unnecessary complication but it's the only thing that will bind these whisper-thin planks and light ribs into a remarkably rigid, nearly monocoque hull. It's historic, it's ancient methodology, very cool to watch and do.
Jay and I work as a team. Half the time I'm above the boat, tapping the rivets home, shaping the mushroomed-over heads in the soft copper. Half the time I'm under the boat, lying on the shop floor, holding the heavy bucking iron against the nail head. The shaping is a more focused task, it requires more care, but holding the bucking iron is heavier work.
There are compensations for that heavy work. Lying beneath the boat's lyric curves I see each strake describing a separate curved plane with a strake-thickness separating it from the next plane – graceful lines paralleling and harmonizing, the color of the varnished white cedar glowing golden and varying with the glare from every work light, shading from dark umber in the shadows to chrome yellow in the light. Beautiful.
The locust wood ribs emerging from the steam box smell bitter and damp. The drilled cedar smells like incense. The tapping and the calling between three or four sets of partners – two sets riveting, two sets placing new ribs – has a discernible rhythm and order.
The work had a sensible urgency and a splendid, strong outcome. What do we do in our lives that gives us much of that?
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
Himself needs more physical work and more contact with working people. The abstract life of a writer and illustrator can be barren, like a room decorated with B&W print-outs of reports. A room and a life need color and a bit of mayhem.
A big crowd tonight, but not because it's Fat Tuesday and one of the members has made jambalaya. Big doings in the shop. Word has gone out that the Club's boatwright, Jon Belinski, is installing five new ribs in one of the older pulling boats. This is a rare demonstration of antique skills and methods, requiring teamwork, timing, speed and finesse. It's more than woodworking.
The ribs begin as tough locust staves. To bend this adamant wood into the fair curve of a rib, it must be cut to its cross-section and steamed in a long, closed, hissing iron pipe for half an hour. The locust ribs emerge at 200°F+ as limp as noodles. Limp for only moments. We will pluck ribs out one at a time with thick gloves and push them into the boat's inner shape, working feverishly before the inner heat dissipates and the locust stubbornness revives.
Contemporary sport boats are, in the old Massachusetts boatyard phrase, "built by the mile and cut off to suit." They're mass produced. You won't see ribs being steamed unless you haunt a cranky New England shipwright's shop peopled with wood-heads devoted to traditional (read "lavishly expensive") wooden boats built more carefully than a Hermann Miller coffee table.
We walk through the steps we will take in dumb-show first, noting where our feet will go, what will be in the way, who must step back, who must come forward. Everyone must work fast and in close concert, because the locust will be flexible from the steam box for less than a minute.
We take special care of these exquisite craft but they endure. Some are older than any of the people who work on them. And because why, mate? Because these 'ere boats is clinker-built, as light as eggshells but tough as pigs' noses. They are San Francisco variations on the Whitehall model. This means that they are rowing boats with a distinct and delicately cupped shaped, a "wineglass" transom (aft end), and that they're very light for their size, built in the ancient "clinker" construction.
"Clinker" is an Old English cognate of "clencher," which indicates that the boat is constructed of thin, overlapping planks of a light, flexible wood (in this case, white cedar) "clenched" to thin ribs with copper rivets. This fastening mode is a very old usage that binds more tightly than nails and more securely than screws. Indeed, nails and screws wouldn't have much to "grab" because the stock is so thin. The soft-as-cheese cedar is milled thin, not much thicker than 1/4" and about three inches wide. The ribs are only 5/8" wide and about 1/2" thick. While they're still whippy and hot, we will drill through and secure a rib, the lower part of an overlapping cedar strake (one of the curving horizontal planks) and the upper part of the next strake.
Now. A rib is whisked out of the steam pipe, slammed into the boat, bent against the soft interior curve of the strakes and forced under some of the boat's inner structure. Held hard, holes are immediately drilled, time management and tool quickness.
As soon as the holes are made a copper riveting nail is tapped through them. The "nail" is square in section to grip the wood more tightly. A round copper washer – called a "burr" – is forced over the square nail with a special riveting tool; it's like a chisel with a flat, blunt end drilled with a hole for the nail to occuply, so that whacking the burr down onto the nail forces the rib and strakes together. When the riveting tool is taken away, the nail is snipped off just above the burr and, while one partner "bucks" (holds a heavy iron on the nailhead end to prevent it from being driven away), the other shapes the soft copper with a small ball-peen hammer. This is the hammer with one flat head and one round head, made specifically for work like this – shaping the "mushroom" with the round head is called "peening". The copper is so malleable that it mushrooms over the burr and each stroke of the shaping ball-peen tightens the assembly.
It seems like intolerably fussy and unnecessary complication but it's the only thing that will bind these whisper-thin planks and light ribs into a remarkably rigid, nearly monocoque hull. It's historic, it's ancient methodology, very cool to watch and do.
Jay and I work as a team. Half the time I'm above the boat, tapping the rivets home, shaping the mushroomed-over heads in the soft copper. Half the time I'm under the boat, lying on the shop floor, holding the heavy bucking iron against the nail head. The shaping is a more focused task, it requires more care, but holding the bucking iron is heavier work.
There are compensations for that heavy work. Lying beneath the boat's lyric curves I see each strake describing a separate curved plane with a strake-thickness separating it from the next plane – graceful lines paralleling and harmonizing, the color of the varnished white cedar glowing golden and varying with the glare from every work light, shading from dark umber in the shadows to chrome yellow in the light. Beautiful.
The locust wood ribs emerging from the steam box smell bitter and damp. The drilled cedar smells like incense. The tapping and the calling between three or four sets of partners – two sets riveting, two sets placing new ribs – has a discernible rhythm and order.
The work had a sensible urgency and a splendid, strong outcome. What do we do in our lives that gives us much of that?
BRAXINOSO SPEAKS
Himself needs more physical work and more contact with working people. The abstract life of a writer and illustrator can be barren, like a room decorated with B&W print-outs of reports. A room and a life need color and a bit of mayhem.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Boat Night
Tuesday is boat night at the Dolphin Club. The Dolphin is a large frame building rambling along the shoreline below the Ghirardelli Chocolate factory, next to the public beach and it's art deco building, across the cove from the San Francisco Maritime Museum. It's a little outpost of New England on the Bay, woody, genteely distressed and (for San Francisco) old. The first floor shelters the weight room, the kitchen, the boatshop, and a collection of pulling boats [lubber's note: rowboats]. Most are for a single oarsperson but there are longboats for two, four and more rowers. Locker rooms, showers, steam rooms and a spartan but easygoing lounge with a spectacular view occupy the upper floor.
The basic Dolphin Activity is quite mad: swimming in the Bay. There is an annual swim to Alcatraz and back. Ahem. I doubt that I will join them. But every Tuesday John Bielinski, the Dolphin's boatbuilder, organizes the 10 or 15 volunteers that show up to maintain the exquisite smaller boats. Like all wooden boats thoughtlessly dunked in water, they need obsessive attention. Add to this, they are bright-finished – varnished. This requires yearly scraping, sanding, and reapplication. The methods, approaches, brands, brushes and application of varnishes can be a religious observance for waterfolk and has created angry sects. The Dolphin is interdenominational in the canon of marine finishes, so even varnish nights are relatively peaceful.
After the volunteers work three hours or so, we all eat together in the boat house at long tables. Since tonight was Fat Tuesday, one of the members had made jambalaya. The kitchen was already fragrant with sausage and filé when a big crowd of about 20 assembled. Word had gone out that one of the older pulling boats needed five new ribs, an operation requiring teamwork, timing, speed and finesse. This was not merely woodworking but time management and tool quickness. And because why, mate? Because these 'ere boats is clinker-built and as light as eggshells, but tough as a pig's nose.
The pulling boats are Whitehalls. This means that they're rowing boats with a distinct and delicately cupped shaped, a "wineglass" transom [back end]. They're very light for their size, built in the ancient "clinker" construction. "Clinker" is an Old English cognate of "clencher," which indicates that the boat is made up of thin, overlapping planks of a light, flexible wood (in this case, white cedar) "clenched" to tough ribs with copper rivets. Rivets are very old usage that binds more tightly than nails and more securely than screws. To fit the locust wood ribs to the inside of the boat's pronounced curves, they must be milled thin (a little thicker than 1/4" and about 5/8" wide) and softened in a steam box for about half an hour. They're taken out with heavy gloves and pressed immediately into the boat. While the ribs are still whippy and hot they're clamped into place and immediately drilled through. The drilled hole passes through a rib, the lower part of an overlapping strake [long hull plank] and the upper part of the next strake below it.
As soon as the holes are drilled a copper riveting nail is hammered through them. The "nail" is square in section to grip the wood more tightly. A round copper washer – called a "burr" – is forced over the square nail with a special riveting tool. The tool is like a chisel with a flat end and a hole for the nail, so that whacking the burr down onto the nail forces the rib and strakes together. The nail is then snipped off just above the burr and, while one partner "bucks" (holds a heavy iron on the nailhead end to prevent it from being driven away), the other shapes the soft copper over the burr with a small ball-peen hammer (the kind with one flat head and one round head, made especially for work like this). The copper is so malleable that it mushrooms easily and each stroke of the shaping ball-peen hammer tightens the assembly.
Is this is more than you want to know? But it's historic stuff, ancient methodology, very cool to watch and do.
The trick is that everyone must work fast and in close concert, because the wood stays flexible from the steam box only a few minutes. Whisked out of the pressure and heat, slammed into the boat against the inside of the strakes and under some of the longitudinal structure, immediately drilled, nails hammered home, burrs forced down against the inside of the rib, the nails cut off at just the right length above the burr, and tap, tap, tap, tap until the rivet is shaped.
Jay and I worked as a team. Half the time I was above the boat, tapping the rivets home, shaping the mushroomed-over heads in the soft copper. Half the time I was under the boat, lying on the shop floor, holding the heavy bucking iron against the nail head. The peening (shaping] was a more focused task. Holding the bucking iron was heavier work. The compensation for that heavy work was lying beneath the boat's lyric curves, each strake describing a separate curved plane with a step separating it from the next plane, the graceful strake lines paralleling and harmonizing, the color of the varnished white cedar glowing golden and varying with the glare from every work light, shading from dark umber in the shadows to chrome yellow in the light. Beautiful. The locust wood ribs emerging from the steam box smelled bitter and damp. The drilled cedar smelled like incense. The tapping and the calling between three sets of partners – two sets riveting, one set placing new ribs – was a cacophony with a subtly discernible rhythm and order.
The work had a sensible urgency and a splendid, strong outcome. What do we do in our lives that gives us much of that? These boats are old fashioned, outmoded in everything but their intrinsic utility: one person using oars to skim the water quickly and with assurance. Some of the boats themselves are old, relics, cockleshells rowed by the oldest members when they were young. We make them live over and over, replacing ribs, strakes, fittings, finish. We have a stake in the heritage. Boats like this are lent to us by dead oarsmen to keep for unborn oarsmen. It's a privilege we share.
Jan Adkins
Braxinoso speaks:
My attention is usually wasted on reminding Himself of tradition and continuity. Occasionally, however, he gets the bit between his teeth and waxes eloquent about the oldness of things. He's quite right to underscore our maritime heritage, of course, but he leaves out the real reason he attends boat night: it's just fun fooling around with boats. As the rat said, there's nothing like it.
Braxinoso
The basic Dolphin Activity is quite mad: swimming in the Bay. There is an annual swim to Alcatraz and back. Ahem. I doubt that I will join them. But every Tuesday John Bielinski, the Dolphin's boatbuilder, organizes the 10 or 15 volunteers that show up to maintain the exquisite smaller boats. Like all wooden boats thoughtlessly dunked in water, they need obsessive attention. Add to this, they are bright-finished – varnished. This requires yearly scraping, sanding, and reapplication. The methods, approaches, brands, brushes and application of varnishes can be a religious observance for waterfolk and has created angry sects. The Dolphin is interdenominational in the canon of marine finishes, so even varnish nights are relatively peaceful.
After the volunteers work three hours or so, we all eat together in the boat house at long tables. Since tonight was Fat Tuesday, one of the members had made jambalaya. The kitchen was already fragrant with sausage and filé when a big crowd of about 20 assembled. Word had gone out that one of the older pulling boats needed five new ribs, an operation requiring teamwork, timing, speed and finesse. This was not merely woodworking but time management and tool quickness. And because why, mate? Because these 'ere boats is clinker-built and as light as eggshells, but tough as a pig's nose.
The pulling boats are Whitehalls. This means that they're rowing boats with a distinct and delicately cupped shaped, a "wineglass" transom [back end]. They're very light for their size, built in the ancient "clinker" construction. "Clinker" is an Old English cognate of "clencher," which indicates that the boat is made up of thin, overlapping planks of a light, flexible wood (in this case, white cedar) "clenched" to tough ribs with copper rivets. Rivets are very old usage that binds more tightly than nails and more securely than screws. To fit the locust wood ribs to the inside of the boat's pronounced curves, they must be milled thin (a little thicker than 1/4" and about 5/8" wide) and softened in a steam box for about half an hour. They're taken out with heavy gloves and pressed immediately into the boat. While the ribs are still whippy and hot they're clamped into place and immediately drilled through. The drilled hole passes through a rib, the lower part of an overlapping strake [long hull plank] and the upper part of the next strake below it.
As soon as the holes are drilled a copper riveting nail is hammered through them. The "nail" is square in section to grip the wood more tightly. A round copper washer – called a "burr" – is forced over the square nail with a special riveting tool. The tool is like a chisel with a flat end and a hole for the nail, so that whacking the burr down onto the nail forces the rib and strakes together. The nail is then snipped off just above the burr and, while one partner "bucks" (holds a heavy iron on the nailhead end to prevent it from being driven away), the other shapes the soft copper over the burr with a small ball-peen hammer (the kind with one flat head and one round head, made especially for work like this). The copper is so malleable that it mushrooms easily and each stroke of the shaping ball-peen hammer tightens the assembly.
Is this is more than you want to know? But it's historic stuff, ancient methodology, very cool to watch and do.
The trick is that everyone must work fast and in close concert, because the wood stays flexible from the steam box only a few minutes. Whisked out of the pressure and heat, slammed into the boat against the inside of the strakes and under some of the longitudinal structure, immediately drilled, nails hammered home, burrs forced down against the inside of the rib, the nails cut off at just the right length above the burr, and tap, tap, tap, tap until the rivet is shaped.
Jay and I worked as a team. Half the time I was above the boat, tapping the rivets home, shaping the mushroomed-over heads in the soft copper. Half the time I was under the boat, lying on the shop floor, holding the heavy bucking iron against the nail head. The peening (shaping] was a more focused task. Holding the bucking iron was heavier work. The compensation for that heavy work was lying beneath the boat's lyric curves, each strake describing a separate curved plane with a step separating it from the next plane, the graceful strake lines paralleling and harmonizing, the color of the varnished white cedar glowing golden and varying with the glare from every work light, shading from dark umber in the shadows to chrome yellow in the light. Beautiful. The locust wood ribs emerging from the steam box smelled bitter and damp. The drilled cedar smelled like incense. The tapping and the calling between three sets of partners – two sets riveting, one set placing new ribs – was a cacophony with a subtly discernible rhythm and order.
The work had a sensible urgency and a splendid, strong outcome. What do we do in our lives that gives us much of that? These boats are old fashioned, outmoded in everything but their intrinsic utility: one person using oars to skim the water quickly and with assurance. Some of the boats themselves are old, relics, cockleshells rowed by the oldest members when they were young. We make them live over and over, replacing ribs, strakes, fittings, finish. We have a stake in the heritage. Boats like this are lent to us by dead oarsmen to keep for unborn oarsmen. It's a privilege we share.
Jan Adkins
Braxinoso speaks:
My attention is usually wasted on reminding Himself of tradition and continuity. Occasionally, however, he gets the bit between his teeth and waxes eloquent about the oldness of things. He's quite right to underscore our maritime heritage, of course, but he leaves out the real reason he attends boat night: it's just fun fooling around with boats. As the rat said, there's nothing like it.
Braxinoso
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