I AM BACK BABY!! (sorry this post is pretty messed up but I was tired)

This is the drafting case I made at the beginning of the class. The things I got to design were the handle and how I veneered the top and inside. Each corner of the case is joined with a different type of joinery















This is a short spline joint.










To the left is a long spline joint and below is a box joint

Hello,

]I am soo sorry I was gone for so long but no more. I had no camera and I really like posting pictures best. But because I have the best family ever, I now have a new camera, thank you mom and Ian!!! Alright I am feeling pretty sick tonight but I wanted to post some pictures of some of the stuff I have been building. This is just the beginning but it is something at long last.















This is the Shaker style side table I built. I turned the handle on the lathe I made the drawer completely by hand, including hand cut and hand planned. The dovetails were hand chiseled.
































These are pictures of the Arts and Crafts stool I had to build. It is made from White Ash. The through tenons were hard to build. The far picture is of the lap joint at the base of the stool.

Thanksgiving Trip

I had a great thanksgiving weekend. I went on a road trip / camping trip with my friend Alyssa. Alyssa came over to victoria on Friday night after quite a run in with the inadequacies of the BC transportation system. Early on Saturday morning we went downtown Victoria and picked up our rental car, went back to my place, threw our stuff in the car and we were off. We had decided to do some camping and hiking and without really thinking about it how far it was I suggested Strathcona Park on Vancouver island. Strathcona is the biggest park on the island, but it is half way up the island. Vancouver island is very big. Bigger than you would think that being that it is an island! It took us about six hours to drive up to and then into the park (but we did take a number of detours on the way). Strathcona is big and was actually BC's first provincial park. It is soo beautiful. The road that leads into it runs along a series of lakes that are edged in by mountains on all sides


This is a picture of Alyssa looking at one of the lakes from a point were the lake narrows

There are a lot of different hikes you can do at Strathcona and the first day (Saturday) we choose to do two little ones. Both of them were beautiful and had waterfalls along the way.

This is the waterfall on the first hike.

And this is me after we climbed off the trail and above to the top of the waterfall.

This is the water fall on the second hike. It was very cool. The water actually ran from the waterfall into an underground cave.

And this is just a view from the second hike I thought was pretty.

After finishing those two hikes we drove to the camp ground and chose a site. The camp ground was kind of at the end of one of the lakes where it narrowed into a river. There was a huge mud flat in between the campgound and the lake. But on the lakes edge of this mud flat there were a whole bunch of huge tree trunks. It was very strange and surreal. We couldn't figure out why these huge trees had been cut down and why there was such a wide gap between them and the rest of the forest. And sorry to say we never solved the mystery. But here is a picture anyway. It is really hard to capture just how vast these spaces really are.


After we got back from exploring the lakes edge it started to rain. I ended up making a fire in the rain and we made dinner and then spent the rest of the evening hanging out in the car. It was actually a lot of fun. Having a good person to hang out with is essential during times like that!
On Sunday we woke up to find that it had finally stopped raining but it was very misty. We decided to hike up and summit Crest Mountain which is about 1550 meters about sea level which is about where we were starting from. We basically hiked right into the low hanging clouds.

This is what the mountains looked like the day we climbed.
The climb was amazing and beautiful and soo much fun. Although a little tiring at points. Near the bottom of the hike we crossed a stream that we followed up for a while.
I really like the bridge though. This is a picture of Alyssa on it.

And here is just another picture of the stream.

Climbing through the mist was just extrordinary. And the forest out here is so green and lush and almost magical looking.

This is looking down in to the misty trees on the way up the mountain.

Here is a little sun poking through the mist.

To add to the magic of the climb, part of the way up three grey jays landed next to us in a tree. They were completely fearless and flew all around us and even tried to steal our shoe laces. About 15 min further up the climb we stopped to eat some trail mix and one of the jays had followed us and would even eat out of our hands.


We finally made it to the top. Here is Alyssa in the alpine brush at the top.



At the summit we were basically sitting right in the cloud. It was hard to see anything and it was quite a bit colder than being in the forest. We were also shocked to find a lake at the top. It was hard to tell how big it was because we could hardly see more than 10 - 15 feet in front of us but it looked so surreal, like it went on forever.
This is the edge of the lake.

This is me and Alyssa at the summit.

And this is a picture of Alyssa just to show how misty it was up there. It was quite windy as well.

After we climbed down we drove to Gold River a tiny community separated by all other communities by Strathcona. It was totally just a logging town. Then we drove home and I dropped Alyssa in Nanamio because there ferry from there is more direct to Vancouver and I drove back to Victoria, dropped the car off and fell fast asleep. It was a long two days but amazing fun and beautiful trip. Even the drive is spectacular with views of both the mountains on the island and the ones on the main land as well.

Well that was my thanksgiving. I hope everyone else had a great time too!

A Few New Pics

hey everyone,

Stuff is going well here. School is as busy as every. I haven't completed a new project yet but we are working on a lot all at once. I am going to take my camera to class some time soon so I should have school pics. I am havingtons of fun there which is great. I had a fun birthday. On Tuesday I went out with a class friend - Clare - and we went to dinner and had a great time. There were three other people in class who had their birthday's the same week. One of them - Wayne - had a birthday party at his house on saterday that we all went to and had a great time. My friend Felicity and I made Wayne and Clare birthday cakes which ended up being used as the arsenal in a food fight, but it was the thought that counts, and the food fight was a lot of fun.
This is Felicity getting some chocolate out of her hair at her apartment before the party



And here I am looking very silly indeed.

On Saterday before the party I went with Julie (my roommate) to Fisherman's Warf because she had to take some pictures for class - she is in photography school. There are a bunch of house boats there, which are not really boats more like floating houses, so I took some pics for yall.

This is a look down one of the house boat docks.


This is a sculpture at the end of one of the house boat piers.


I really like the monkeys on this boat!


This is just an old man down at the docks that I really liked the look of. He seemed so serious.


This is Julie in her ever so classy room in our apartment. Which reminds me we are moving this weekend so I will take pics of the new place and post them.

I have also decided to start volunteering and have choosed to do so at a women's shelter called - Transition House. I have to take about 2 months of classes before I can volunteer but it has been a really interesting experience so far. It has been hard emotionally though to learn about how pervasive abuse is in our society. But it will be nice to be part of the solution. Other than that not much else is new, I have been biking alot. I am going to bike to school everyday this week I think which is about a half an hour there and the same back. I have also been biking a number of other places and victoria has a million more hills than toronto so I am going to be fit if I keep it up! Well miss everyone and I hope that you are all doing great!

First Project

Hello,

Just a quick note. I have finished my first project at school. It is a simple pine side table made from construction grade 2/4's. The pictures are not that great, but I will try and take some better ones next week.





We are currently working on two different projects at the same time. One is an instrument case - a wooden briefcase basically. It is very interesting because all the the corners are being constructed with different types of joinery. The second project is a drawer for a little shaker side table we will build later. It is going to have dovetail joinery. The drawer has been as exhaustive project because it has to be all done by hand. This means we sawed the wood up by hand and we also have to plane down each piece to be flat and square by hand with block planes. This is a difficult process which requires a real careful hand and constant measurements. The drawer has definitely provided me with a new respect for people who built houses, and boats and furniture before there were power tools. Well I will post more pictures when I take them.

Cheers

This is a picture of the shop from the class room ( where we spend the mornings doing lectures) which is up a set of stairs and sits over the finishing room and tool room. The class room has windows that look down over the shop.

This is our first night in the apartment. We have since aquired one bed and are picking up another tonight :)

hey everyone,

So today was my second day of school and . . . . . . . I LOVE IT. School is so much fun, and it is almost weird for my to say that! There are two teachers who trade off teaching days and they are both great, really easy going and nice and really want everyone to achieve their goals. There are 17 people in the class right now because one of person never showed up. There is a huge range of ages from over 50 to one guy who just finished high school. There are only four girls in the class but I kind of expected that. The entire class seems easy going and it is interesting to have such a range of ages and experiences and goals. Most people have worked for a number of years or pursued other forms of education before coming to this class. The shop is amazing! It is huge with lots of different tools and machines. We got trained on a number of machines today including the table saw, the radial arm saw, the portable power saw, the jointer and the thickness planer but with each new technique we will learn more about each piece. Today we started our first project, it is a simple side table with a seven plank top. It is a total class project and we are only doing to get used to all of the machines. We have been divided up into four groups and each group is making one section of the table, the legs, the side rails, the end rails and the plank tops. Then we will each assemble our own. Our next project is a little tool case that kind of looks like a wooden briefcase. We will get into dove-tail work and independent work for that one. I have seen some of the other classes work around the shop and it is just so beautiful and it just astounds me that I will be able make stuff like that soon. Really over all the class is exactly what I wanted and I am looking forward to spending every day there. It is kind of like a treat instead of something I have to do! Well I guess that is about it. I will try and take some more pictures of my work and I create it. My teacher also told us on the first day that companies etc. Actually call in and make a list of places that graduates can get a job, so it looks like work will be no problem when I finish the program. This year is also special because the Furniture Society (http://www.furnituresociety.org/) which has annual meetings all over North America is having this years meeting in Victoria during the last three days of class in June. This means that we will not only have our final project on display in front of some of the best furniture makers in North America but we will get to mingle with them and meet them. It is very exciting but also kind of scary. Well I hope everyone is doing great back home. Cheers until next time. . . .

This is lupin on Grouse Mountain for my mom

This is a picture of part of down town Vancouver just to show Chris the mountains that surround Vancouver.

This is the sail boat - wave dancer - in snug harbour our first morning waking up on the boat

This is some of the storm clouds over the island

Here I am sailing on the edge of the storm

This is Robin and Erika

This is the light house on Entrance island which marks the entrance to the bay that holds Nanaimo harbour. The mountains in the back ground are on the mainland north of Vancouver

These are the black berries me and Erika picked

This is part of Richard the boat builder's yard