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salt and wood

“Re use it or lose it”

June 1, 2012 Boat 31: Greek Style

 

This clunky tanker was thrown together very quickly. A low centre of gravity with mid mounted foam raising the deck. A bucket sail combination with a cylindrical mainsail and a side mounted directional sail on the bow. An additional flat sail was added to the main sail to pull this lug through the water. She sailed surprisingly well, albeit to an onshore breeze that meant launching her into the chop of the point, that was handled admirably and a short sail back to shore. And no it didn’t sail backwards.

June 1, 2012 Boat 30: Hemisphere

All there is to say about this self-righting number is that the coloured plastic components made for great pictures against the sky and the decomposing concrete head wall at the end of Yarra Bay. The foam was tied over the hull instead of wedged between the hull and ballast bottle.  This resulted in a submarine sailing style. That seemed to stabilize the craft if only slowing her down a little. Overall she set of true and confidently cut out into Botany Bay.

 

March 12, 2012 R12: Orange Blue and Blue

“Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.”
― Joseph Conrad

March 12, 2012 R11: Blue Yellow

“But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and, by heavens I tell you, it had gone mad.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

March 12, 2012 R10: Blue Float

“Joy and sorrow in this world pass into each other, mingling their forms and their murmurs in the twilight of life as mysterious as an overshadowed ocean, while the dazzling brightness of supreme hopes lies far off, fascinating and still, on the distant edge of the horizon”
― Joseph Conrad

March 12, 2012 R9: Orange

March 12, 2012 R8: Blue Orange

March 11, 2012 Boat 29: Flood Cat

As a result of recent extreme rainfalls great areas of parkland and streets adjoining the Cooks River of the Inner West of Sydney have been inundated to record levels. Flood Cat is an assemblage of detritus selected from the long flotsam lines that marked the extent of the high water.  One interesting component was parts of some sort of Chinese shrine that had been dislodged someplace by the flood and washed up here in the park. I employed a skimmer design for lack of keel material on hand. This was a spontaneous effort so I did not even have a knife to work with. A crude and fast operation. The most interesting outcome was that the tidal flow was running down stream but the breeze was pushing upstream. So it sailed well cutting a noticeable directional wake and covered allot of water but little actual ground. A bigger sail would have cancelled this out and seen it sail upstream successfully.

March 6, 2012 Item 19: Red Rig

 

I found this short plank (see first picture) washed up on a beach near the airport. The idea was that this would take on the essence of an oil rig/ platform but in its finished glory it is emitting more of a Japanese architectural vibe. This is probably due to the natural cupping of the timber you can see in the end grain pictures. I am happy to run with that. You can see the remnant paint on the base and one edge that was lightly sanded and then varnished. The raggedy ends were removed with a drop saw. Though the top was sanded it was oiled rather than varnished so this can be used as a cheese/ chopping board. There was some waxing of old nail and fixing and ocean borne borer holes. Note the asymmetrical legs and ‘blacking’ of the timber where nails and metal fixings have oxidized while floating in the sea salt. I feel like this item should come with a set of Ginsu Steak Knives. If K tel where still around it would have a blog.

March 5, 2012 Item 23: Big Cheese

This outstanding slab of Eucalyptus was retrieved from a skip bin in Newtown on the way home from a run. Screws and batons removed from what was probably some sort of mantle. Holes plugged with yellow crayon wax. After it was all sanded back the top was oiled to make it a suitable food serving surface and the ends, sides and base were varnished. The stamp located on the top side was varnished to protect it by use of a template cut out of cardboard and taped down to get a clean shaped edge. The rubber feet were salvaged from an old wooden rocking hoarse that itself was an earlier restored street salvage that was finally toddlerised to death. This guy is truly the Hawaiian long-board of cheese and crackers.

March 4, 2012 Item 22: M2O

 

Melf 2 Orange is the second ‘Man Shelf’ I have crafted and it is themed orange. Man Shelf, Man Station you know a place to locate your keys, phone, wallet etc when you get home as a means to managing your daily accoutrement. I stripped the old chromed handles off these street found drawers and used a jewelry cleaning concoction of water, white vinegar and detergent to eat them back to bones. I used the same evil to restore the spring that you see tensioning the orange rope. The spring is from a discarded deck chair and the rope was washed up on the beach. This creates a handy area to stuff cards or hang things of the deck. Not to mention this tensioned rope is actually adding strength to the hull. I cut one of the found drawers down to become a drawer within the other. And lined the base of it with some soaked off beer labels, using archival wood glue and a sealing coat of varnish. There is a storage/ hold area located beneath this drawer if you fully remove it. There is also a slide out deck extension for dabbling with keys, coins, cards etc built into the ceiling of the unit. This is faced with a rich red piece of driftwood and the underside also lined with beer labels. All nail holes etc have been sealed with orange wax before cutting back surfaces and varnishing. The middle shelf with the leading groove edge is a satiny piece of tongue in groove Eucalyptus floorboard recovered from a skip bin.

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March 4, 2012 Item 21: Crest

I don’t know what sort of timber this is or where it came from. But it looks like it is just a by-product of some chain saw clearing somewhere in the world. It looks like it had been in the sea for some time. I set it to dry on our front porch and with each week a few more little bits of shells fell out of the cracks as it dried and shrank. I finally drilled the side of it and fitted a piece of street found dowel as a ring holder on what was to become a soap bottle stand for the bathroom. I fitted a small dowel foot to the base to both level the top and minimize the amount of base in contact with wet bench. I left all the sides as they were found and intensely sanded and varnished the top to create a great contrast. My wife questions the practicality of this item but I am quietly pleased with its sculptural nature and the mystery of the origins of this piece of tree.  

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March 3, 2012 Boat 28: Mellow Flying V

Mellow because its yellow and Flying V because the keel is a V drink bottle and a reference to the Gibson Flying V guitar. Self-righting flotsam boats with a sand and water filled keel was one revelation. But adding a glass bottle instead of plastic takes it up a notch, being heavier, serving the purpose better. Glass bottles are a scarce material for a flotsam boat as obviously most that find their way into the sea sink. Somebody has to drink enough of the contents to create buoyancy and recap the bottle before it goes overboard. Which means glass bottles on the beach are either accidentally lost overboard or the result of obsessive-compulsive litterers. In a similar vein rudders are more difficult to come by, as they need to be fine flat and dense. Fine flat and dense things tend to sink when they fall overboard. The rudder on this boat is a piece of angle bar that was unscrewed from a piece of ply that it hitched to shore on. It fitted pretty snugly over the rectilinear timber hull. I used a bit of flotsam and rope as a sled to collect bits for this one, on this grey day it must have looked like a scene from ‘The Road.’ You can see in these pictures that the aluminum can rudder made way for the angle bar rudder by launch time. The handle of the detergent bottle strapped to the bow is an air rudder helping pull the bow forward. How did she sail? Well there was a slow consistent breeze but now real wake off the bow to talk of at launch. I think the sail was set a little to far back causing her to stall at times. So to tell the truth she was doing as much drifting as sailing out.        

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January 22, 2012 Item18: Mirror Mirror

 

I found this circa 1930s mirror on a rubbish collection pile a couple of years ago and it only recently occurred to me that it would take relatively little effort to bring out its inner beauty! I took it apart to discover a great deal of lumpy dust, an interesting stamp on the hand painted silver mirror backing and series of little wedges holding the glass into the timber frame. The frame was doweled together and as you can see has an arched top component. I simply cleaned all the bits and sanded away the previous wood coloured paint restoration probably from the 1970s. Then plugged the holes with some orange wax and varnished it. Added some brass hooks from the Bunnings bargain bin and some orange rope salvaged from the beach and voila!

January 7, 2012 Boat : Sketches 1