Journal Entry #2: Carving on the Beach

There was also a wood carving establishment on the beach in San Pedro: a board set across two saw horses just under a tree. The place was frequented by a number of dread-locked men, the foremost of which seemed to be Augustus (?) Ford. Ford, as he called himself, could be seen here, always working on something, with his wares spread out on the board and on a blanket in front of it. These included standards in Belize: shark, stingray, turtle, mermaid, and cross. Most were made out of a dark tropical wood that had an almost white sapwood running through it - a striking feature of the carvings.

I don't know if Ford made all of his wares, as he claimed. I tend to think the carvings were bought unfinished from the mainland and finished by Ford and his friends. But when I asked about how he worked, he gave me a tour of his workshop (a Rubbermaid bin that he was using as a work surface). Here's what he had:

1 machete
2 half-round wood rasps in 2 sizes
1 v-gouge (with a handle designed to rest in the palm)
1 small mallet that he had obviously made for himself
1 hack saw (for cutting up old machetes)
1 detail carving knife (made of the tip of an old machete)
1 gouge or round-tipped chisel (made of the tang of an old machete)
1 triangle file
1 medium sized piece of glass
lots of sand paper, all grades

That was pretty much it. He demonstrated the use of glass as a scraper, using the triangle file to cut the edge of the glass, then using it to snap a fresh glass edge. That edge was then used to scrape a shaving from the wood. Ford said this let him skip several grades of sand paper when finishing. The finishing started with a sanding sealer that smelled strongly of turpentine (even with the sea breeze going). The process as he described it was to seal the wood, sand carefully with the coarsest grit, seal again, and sand with the next finest grit, working his way down to a very fine tooth. At the end he used a bit of 000 steel wool and polished the piece with neutral shoe polish (the equivalent of a Butchers wax).

My brother's family brought home three of these sculptures, sold to them by a guy riding down the beach: a mobile outpost, I think, of Ford's operation. One of these statues has already cracked several times from the water loss (coming from warm and moist Belize to cold and dry Massachusetts). We're hoping the other two fare better.

Journal Entry #1: Woodworking in Belize

Over the coming year I plan to include journal entries amongst the other content on this site. I expect these will be more personal and less visual than other posts. Here's the first of what may be almost daily entries.

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I just returned from a vacation/wedding in Belize and was interested to see woodworking done in a developing country. I saw numerous commercial woodworking shops and recognized them not by a sign (there was none) but by the sound of power tools and the sight of lumber yards. I wished to get into one and talk with the proprietor, but did not get the chance.

Our hotel was next to a shop that had quite a stock of what looked to be 8/4 and 12/4 rough lumber and a chain link fence topped with barbed wire. The wood was obviously air drying, not stacked and stickered as we commonly see in the States, but leaning against racks made of lashed together trees. These racks positioned the wood to catch the prevailing winds across the majority of their surface. I planned to take a picture of this but never did.

Another local shop opened onto the main road and I caught a glimpse as we drove by in a golf cart. I saw the industrial green of older but well cared for machines, which looked to include an 8" or 10" jointer, a table saw, a 14" or 18" bandsaw, and several other machines.

Because I was on an island, most of the wood was imported, and most of the woodworking in evidence was made right on the island. Joinery in most pieces was simple, but sturdy—generally butt joined, but sometimes rabbeted. I saw no dovetail or mortise and tenon joints; no doubt these complex joints required more time than could be afforded.

Mahogany and pine appeared to be the primary wood choices: this is the land of tropical woods, so mahogany is locally harvested and officially the national tree. On a tour of Mayan ruins I saw two mahogany trees that were easily 10 or 12 feet in diameter and grew tall enough to feel at home in Manhattan.

Most furniture examples were utilitarian, obviously assembled with glue and nails and either painted bright colors or covered with spar varnish to protect against the sea breezes and rough weather. Bracing was visible on all of these: a nod to the fact these joints would rack, and an attempt to prevent it. Still, all these chairs, tables, bars, and decks were sturdy, so this approach appeared to work well enough. I tend to over think my joints, and probably over engineer them as well. Here was an example of how glue and nail could do the job well enough. These examples would never last a century, but many appeared to have already weathered several years and remained serviceable.

Ash and Canvas: Gers in Camp

Quite a few of the camp members got together during the last year and built gers (popularly called yurts) for this year's Pennsic. They bought air-dried ash from a saw mill, and built rather impressive tents. Anne and I have had a ger for the last five or six years, and they are extremely comfortable camping – even when it rains (or pours) steadily for six days, like it did last year.

One good thing about gers is how they resist wind. Because they are domed at the top, and all the force of the roof's weight is transfered down to the walls, when a strong wind comes it pushes the entire structure tighter to the ground, using the same aerodynamics that lift an airplane (only in reverse). I'm always glad of this when heavy thunderstorms come through. It wouldn't survive a tornado, of course, but as long as the materials hold, I'm fairly confident that the tent won't fail in linear winds.

Another plus is the fact that they have holes at the peak of the roof that can be uncovered in good weather. This lets air circulate as though the entire tent were a chimney. With the smoke hole open and the tent walls slightly raised, the air flow keeps the tent almost the same temperature as the outside.

Gers have walls that support rafters pegged into a roof ring. There are no internal supports, so a 16' diameter tent like the one Anne and I use, is entirely usable space with five or six foot tall walls at the outside and rafters that rise to a peak of 8 or 9 feet. The walls are a lattice of cross-bound staves that are arranged like those expandable baby gates: the lattice opens out to form a wall of diamond openings (see below). The latice is very flexible and can rollup fairly tightly.

The red column above is the wall (called the khana) of a 16' diameter tent with 5' walls. Like all of the new gers, they stained the wood of the khana, rafters, and roof rings to match and attached the staves of the khana with aluminum aircraft rivets.

The pile of red wood above is all the rafters for the same ger. These fit into a roof ring at the top and sit on a wire at the bottom. In some designs the rafters are notched and sit on the x of the lattice walls

Above is the wall and door of another tent, being assembled. This is the same size tent as the red one. In this case, the walls are held fast by the door frame and by the wire that encircles the top of the wall. In traditional gers, there are belly bands that encircle the lattice of the khana and prevent the circle from expanding during use.

Here is the roof ring that supports the top end of the rafters. It is leaning against the outside of another of the new gers.

Above the roof is being put on the ger. In these a ladder is used, but in many constructions the ring can be raised from the ground. In fact, traditional Mongolian gers have two poles that lash onto the roof ring and allow the rafters to be assembled by one or two people without the use of a ladder.

Several of the new gers had quite impressive wooden doors on them. Unfortunately, I neglected to take pictures of them. Adding a wooden door to our tent is a project I've had in mind for some time now. Perhaps I'll make one for next year. For now, we're comfortable with a canvas door panel.

Woodworking Field Trip: Mystic Seaport

I went to Mystic Seaport with friends today and had a great time. If you are interested in boat building or early-American history, I recommend it. I wish more of the shops had been running, but what can I expect on a Saturday? We did get to see the shop space without the shipwrights, and the blacksmith was up and running (though I was out of memory on the camera by that time).

Long straight logs waiting to become masts or planking

Giant bandsaw: The whole saw is on trunions!

Wooden lobster trap in progress

Working steam box for bending the lobster trap frames

Winch and huge all-wood block, to pull ships onto their sides

Tools of the trade: old on the left, new on the right