Month: March 2015

While I am in the North Country I want to drop in on Keith Austin, owner of Blue Line Hardwoods in Long Lake.  I am hoping to pick up some figured maple for guideboat decks and floorboards.

So what is the significance of the name “Blue Line”?  The Adirondack Park was created in 1892 over concerns that the area was being plundered by timber barons who were clear cutting and leaving the slash ripe for forest fires.  Mud slides and silt runoff from this depredation posed a threat not only to the Erie Canal but also to the Hudson River, a main source of drinking water for New York City.  So in 1892 the New York legislature set aside an area larger than the national parks of Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Canyon, and the Great Smokies to become the Adirondack Park.  The protection of this vast area was strengthened even further by passage of the “forever wild” act in 1895.  This act prevents any logging, mining or other development of any land owned by the State in the Park.  The State owns about 40% of the Park’s land, or 2.4 million acres of the 6 million acre total.  The boundary of the Park is designated by a blue line on maps, hence the name Blue line Hardwoods.

Keith is a 6th generation guideboat builder, having learned the craft from his uncle Bunny. I have known Bunny for some time having spent many enjoyable hours with him on his front porch chatting about guideboats and his family’s history.  According to Bunny, the first of the Austins came to Long Lake from Ferrisburg, VT sometime around 1850.  William Austin set up shop building boats and the craft was passed down from generation to generation to the present time.

Keith’s shop is equipped with up-to-date milling machinery and he has a nice selection of native hardwoods  He also carries some non-native species as well.  As I will explain below, he is starting a line of materials for guideboat construction.

Keith shows me the latest guideboat he is building.  This is boat is being built from patterns used by his great uncle Merlie.  It shows what a fine craftsman Keith is.  The talent for building these boats has indeed been passed down to the latest generation.

This boat is being planked with very fine grained northern white cedar.  When I ask Keith if he has any trouble with it splitting, he says that “yes, that happens sometimes especially when I am backing out a plank”.  He says that Uncle Bunny tells him he needs a “crying chair” so that when something like that happens he can sit in it and weep.

Keith shows me the patterns he is using.  These were passed down from his great uncle Merlie, and probably from even further back.  They are labelled “Merlie Chase” indicating that the master boat builders willingly share their patterns and expertise.

Keith tells me he is beginning to carry a line of materials needed for building a traditional guideboat. These include bottom board stock and flitches, or roots, for making ribs and stems.  I tell him that I need bottom board stock or my next boat.  He finds me a clear piece of quarter sawn white pine 15 feet long and 10″ wide that is perfect a guideboat bottom board.

We then search for through some of his figured maple for something that will make my decks really stand out.  We find a piece of highly figured maple that is striking in appearance.

The next thing I am looking for is some curly, or tiger maple, for floor boards.  We find a nice piece of that too.

The really great thing about purchasing wood from Blue Line is that you can have it in the final milled condition.  I needed the deck stock as 3/16″ material and the floorboards 1/4″ thick.  Keith resawed the four and five quarter stock and then milled it down to the final thickness.  This saved me not only much time but a job I don’t particularly relish.  I felt that the Blue Line charges are very reasonable, especially compared with the prices I pay here in the Delaware-Pennsylvania area.

You can get a hold of Keith at (518) 624-3131 or at his website www.bluelinehardwoods.com

 

While I was in the North Country this time I wanted to take some measurements off the sister ship of the one I am building.  This boat was donated to the Adirondack Museum by the King family some years ago.  To have a look at it I must go to the Museum’s Collection Study and Storage Center (CSSC).

The CSSC was opened in 2000.  Its purpose is to keep safe the Museum’s vast treasure of Adirondack cultural artifacts and allow researchers easy access to them.  The CSSC building is impressive with 400,000 square feet of climate controlled space.  To enter the building is a trip back in time.  It is like going into your Aunt Minnie’s attic; the collection includes just about every item that had some Adirondack historical or cultural basis.  There are collections of wood stoves, chain saws, church organs, beds from Dr. Trudeau’s sanatorium in Saranac lake, fire engines, and on and on.

I had a personal involvement with the CSSC during the time I spent as a full time resident of Long Lake.  Hallie Bond, then the curator of watercraft at the Museum, asked for assistance in moving the wooden boat collection to the new storage facility. At that time the boat collection was housed in a haphazard way.  Some of the boats were stashed in bins in the basement of the main building while others were barely protected from the weather in makeshift sheds across the road from the Museum’s main building.

So in early 2001, a gathering consisting of Hallie and several volunteers transported the boats down the hill to the CSSC where they were processed before moving them to their allotted storage location.  Key to all of this was that they must first pass through the watchful eye of the Museum’s conservator, Doreen.  Doreen’s job is to see that all the items in the Museum’s collection remain intact.  That means protecting them from mildew, rust, fungus, moths and any other thing of a destructive nature.

We ensured that all the the boats in the Museum’s collection at that time went through the conservator’s lab.  Here they were carefully cleaned and inspected and anything of special note recorded.  Then off the went to the Hall of Wooden Boats, as I call it.

For anyone that loves wooden boats this has to be a pilgrimage site.  Here you are surrounded by exquisite wooden boats of every description.  It is hard to walk down any of the isles because you can’t help stopping to examine this gem or that beauty.  It is truly an overwhelming experience for a lover of wooden boats!  You can go on a tour of the CSSC during the summer months.  Check with the visitor’s center to find out when they are running tours of the facility.

So Doreen gladly obliges my request to check out the Santanoni guideboat that Tom and Susan King donated to the Museum in 1972.  Here is a photo of Doreen preparing to move the boat out into the isle.

What I here for is to measure the locations of the oar sockets, or straps, on this boat.  I have always felt that the the location of the straps in the forward rowing position doesn’t quite allow a full stroke of the oars.  So I will double check that.

We pull the boat out onto the isle.  She is a beauty, made entirely of Spanish cedar, just like my latest boat.

The view of the bow shows what a fine craftsman Chase was.   I really love that the deck has a crown to it.  It lends  sense of motion to the craft.

The stern shows, with little doubt, that Chase was its builder.  The aftermost rib has an “ear” on it to support the stern seat cleat.

My eye catches sight of another Chase boat.  It is the blue boat on the left in the first photo above.  It may be a very old boat built by Chase.  It is so old that apparently iron screws, rather than brass ones, were used in its construction.  Museum authorities believe it was built in the 1880’s for William West Durant and that it made the rounds of his Great Camps; Pine Knot, Uncas, Sagamore, Arbutus Lake and finally Eagle Nest. But they caution that it could have been one of four that Durant commissioned of Chase to go with the lodge he was building at Arbutus Lake in 1898.  I guess that if  one could verify its age, ie. by its having iron screws, then that would rule out the second hypothesis.

Here is a stern view of the Chase blue boat.  Chase often painted his boats blue, especially early on.  The aftermost rib here is a scribe half rib (it has no foot) and it has an ear to support the seat cleat.

Every February my wife, Fran and I head to the Adirondacks for a two to three week stay.  Our neighbors here in Delaware think we are just a bit crazy since most people are headed in the opposite direction this time of year.  But Fran has a quilting workshop where she and her quilting buddies are reunited once a year.  I like to go to get a real taste of winter.  I can always count on deep snow this time of year and at least one good snowstorm.  During this trip I also plan to visit the Adirondack Museum’s Collection Storage and Study Center and a local hardwood dealer.  These two excursions will be covered in separate posts.

Little did we know when we arrived in Long Lake in early February that this February was to be one of the coldest on record for the northeast United States.  In fact it was within a degree of setting the record for the coldest February ever.

Last year Long Lake started a tradition know as Ice Fest.  Local businesses and organizations hire an ice sculptor to portray various town themes in ice.  Below is an ice sculpted float plane that was commissioned by Helm’s Aero Service.  This Long Lake float plane sightseeing business was started by Tom Helm’s father, who served in WWII as a crew member on B-17’s flying missions over Europe.  The business is now in its 60th year!  Long Lake natives tell me that, for them,the first sign that spring has finally arrived is the sound of Tom’s plane making its first flight after a very long winter.

As you can see from the first photo, the logo for Long Lake is the black bear.  Hoss’s Country Corner, a general store, commissioned the artist to carve an ice bear, complete with a fish in its mouth.

The town’s close association with guideboats and guideboat builders prompted the Long Lake Historical Society to propose a guideboat theme.  Wallace Emerson (1874-1953) learned to build guideboats from his uncle George Stanton.  George had earlier gone to Old Forge, NY to teach Dwight Grant how to build them.  Wallace opened his own shop in 1905 and apparently built some extra wide guideboats for fishing and hauling.  My neighbor, Tom Bissell, a 5th generation Long Laker, recalls that his father, Talbot remembers Wallace towing a fleet of guideboats up the lake every spring to the Sagamore Hotel.  Sadly the Sagamore is no longer in existence.

The weather in Long Lake this February was brutally cold. On many nights the temperature dipped to -20 F (-29 C).  On some days the temperature never reached 0 F (-18 C).  On some days the temperature would start out above zero and them slowly descend below zero.  Add to that the wind chills were often far below zero.

The following are some photos taken around town.

A picnic bench at the summer ice cream stand.

The snow seems to take on a plastic nature.

We have about 2 1/2 feet of snow on level ground, much more on plowed drifts.

When the time comes to pack up and go home the thermometer reads -20F when we awake at 6:30 am.

 

This causes all kinds of unexpected havoc.  To winterize the camp, I have to turn off the main water valve that is outside near the lake.  Once that is done I must open the two outside spigots so that no water is left in them.  The hot water spigot opens easily but not the cold one.  I turn the water back on and deluge the obstinate valve with hot water.  No luck.  It won’t open.  We decide to train a hair dryer on it from the inside the house.in hopes that this will thaw it out.  After about an hour it finally opens.

In the meantime we need to drain the hot water heater tank.  A short hose leads from the hot water tank to a small hole in the foundation.  Usually the water from the heater drains into this hole with no problem.  We soon realize that the ground under this hole is frozen solid and the water from the tank is spilling out onto the floor.  Since having 60 gallons of water flow out onto the basement floor is not an option, we start a bucket brigade to haul the hot water away out into the yard.  After a two hour delay we are finally ready to say goodbye and think about what a lovely sight will greet us upon our return in June.

I just got the latest on the February temperatures for the New York State’s northeast cities that lie near the Adirondack Park.  It is not surprising that all experienced record low temperatures for the month of February.  The average temperatures for these cities for February are:

Buffalo 10.9 F ( -11.7 C)

Syracuse 9.0 F (-12.8 C)

Ithaca 10.2 F (-12.1 C)

Binghamton 12.2 F (-11 C)

On a normal year Buffalo would have an average temperature for February of 26.3 F (-3.2 C).  Syracuse and Ithaca each had 14 days of zero Fahrenheit ( -17.8 C) or below temperatures in February.

The Hudson River, which begins in the Adirondack Park, is frozen solid above New York City with ice up to 1 1/2 feet thick.  The US Coast Guard is keeping the shipping lanes open up to Albany by regular patrols of ice breaking ships.