This year our house was on the Fullerton Beautiful Garden Tour. Margie was invited to join the tour late last year and she worked 40+ hours every week preparing the yard. She finished projects that had been waiting for years, planted, and basically made the yard wonderful. It call came down to the last few days when we hired guys from Home Depot for the final push. The results were awesome.

Above is a map and slideshow of the all of the houses on the tour with photos taken at each house. It was created with HipGeo by turning on tracking and taking photos along the way.

Fullerton is “Tree City USA” with more trees under city management (per capita) than any city in the US. In California you can have a wide variety of trees in a very small space as evidenced by the trees in this tour.

The tour was created with HipGeo. It took around 45 minutes to create (including the walking).

This is a college tour of Fullerton College (or FJC was we know it around here). It was created with Hipgeo by simply walking around the campus and taking photos. The whole process took around an hour.

Margie and I have had great experiences taking classes at Fullerton College. I’ve taken woodworking, drawing, and writing classes. Margie has taken a wide variety of classes mostly in the horticulture department, but with forays into Mandarin and art.

This is an experimental view of the day we spent in Berkeley that was created using HipGeo. Cam, Margie, and I drove around buying stuff for Cam’s apartment in Berkeley. There were multiple trips to Ikea, a trip up into the hills to buy a bed we found on Craig’s list and lots of other little trips. We ended the day eating Korean Barbeque with Cam and his roommates.

The Amazing Cameron Saws Kyles Head Off

Rebecca and her partner made great calculations, but fell a little short on building the boat itself. It imploded inwards in dramatic fashion about halfway across the pool.

Cam and Kyle Build the Form. Observers Learn

I tried to give Rebecca and her partner tips about how to join the wood and how wood behaves, but it wasn’t enough in the end. When it came to building Cameron’s boat, I wanted to help them do something dramatically different that would not only get their boat across the water, but set it apart from other boats that would be christened that day.

The boys said that they got extra points for curves in the boat. 1/4″ pine will bent a little, but it snaps if the bend is too dramatic. I had the boys do some research on bending wood and we decided to try steam bending. This would allow us to get some dramatic curves without the wood breaking.

Steam Bending Chamber

To hold the wood in place while it dried after steaming, we built a form on a sheet of plywood by pounding nails a regular intervals along the curves we wanted to form. We had one form for the bow to stern shape and another form for the port to starboard shape. The plan was to use these shapes to create a strong frame for the boat and then steam and bend the rest of the wood and join it to the frame in place.

One of the keys to steam bending the wood was to elevate the end of the pipe furthest from the steam hose. This allowed the rising steam to reach the far end. Our first experiment bending wood was in a much shorter chamber and we found it took only a few minutes to soften the wood enough for it to bend pretty dramatically. However, in the 10′ long pipe, it took around 40 minutes before the wood was pliable enough for the dramatic U shaped curves of our boat.

The whole process was pretty tedious, but after breaking a few pieces and we finally got some of them soft enough to fit into the forms.

Forms for Bending Wood

We were a little depressed, but it was time for plan B. This time it HAD to work because we were out of time. Whatever we did had to float and stay together.

Cam and Mom Building the Frame

The result was dramatic and wonderful. Now only did the wood hold it’s shape, but it was obviously MUCH stronger than the steam bent wood. Steaming wood tends to weaken the cell walls of the wood, reducing the strength. Lamination, on the other hand, makes the wood stronger. Wood tends to fail along natural weak spots in material. The shear strength is determined by the weakest point. By laminating three strips together, each strip supports the adjacent one. It is very unlikely that the weakest point in one strip is adjacent to the weakest point in another strip. That’s why skateboard decks, skis, snowboards, and other wooden pieces that require high strength are all laminated from thin strips.

Weaving Strips for Basket Strength

The hard part is making the strips. We needed a bazillion strips that were 1/4″ x 1/12″ and eight to ten feet long. Cutting them on the table saw loses too much material to the kerf. You’d end up with 1/8″ of sawdust for every 1/12″ strip. Cutting them on the bandsaw is better, but since my bandsaw does straight lines pretty badly, it required that we cut them to around 1/6″ and then plane or sand them down the final size.

This was my job as I wanted the boys to keep their fingers. I have more experience with the power tools and have already enjoyed my fingers for 50 years. It was a long boring afternoon milling the strips. My recommendation for anyone contemplating using the lamination technique is to find a lumber yard that will mill them for you.

Once we had the strips, we started to glue together the strips that formed the ribs of the boat. There were four long ones for the prow to stern and nine short ones for the starboard to port (side to side) dimension.

Joining the Ribs

Once the ribs were glued together, the rest of the board was built in place without forms. We laminated three strips along the top of the boat and planned to do something similar for the rest of the sides, front and back. However, Cameron came up with the idea of using a single thin strip and weaving it back and forth through the ribs like a basket. This enabled us to put the strips closer together without going over the weight limit.

Occasionally, one of the strips would break. It was a simple matter to repair it by gluing another short strip over the break.

Papering the Boat

We made sure that there were at least two layers of paper in the area that would be below the waterline.

Like most boat projects, we didn’t start painting until late on the night before the boat was due. To get the glue on the paper and the paint to dry faster, we kept a fan with a heater behind it blowing on the boat. The boys put three coats of paint on the boat allowing about an hour between coats for it to dry.

Flying Pig Before the Race

We weighed the boat a number of times at different intervals to ensure we did not go over the weight. In the beginning, you weigh the strips and paper and guess how much the glue and paint will add. When the frame is partially complete you weight it and then, when it’s complete, you weigh the frame and paper together. We were always well within the weight. I think the final boat weighted around 3 1/2 pounds so we could have added a significant amount of material if we’d needed it.

My main concern for the boat now was the depth. I had encouraged to boys to make the draft more shallow leaving more material for strength and less for the boat’s size. We compromised at around 16″ deep, but I was still concerned that it was too deep for the pilot to paddle with their hands.

Flying Pig in Action

As it turned out she was an experienced pilot. She brought a towel for the bottom of the boat so that she could kneel and long sleeves to protect her arms. She could only paddle on one side of the boat at a time, but she was able to reach the water. The asymmetrical paddling made it harder to go fast and navigate a straight line (she did a full 360 at the end of the pool), but she made it across the pool without event.

Mrs. Zimmerman with the Moms

If we had to build the boat again, we’d change the shape a bit, but the building technique was pretty sound. Their boat got full points in all categories and it’s destined for the ceiling of fame in the physics lab.

Nice job boys!

Click on any of the pictures to see the entire gallery.

Bruce's Garden

He is a student of horticulture and takes his gardening seriously. I constantly wished that I could share the highlights of the trip with Margie, but never more than when we were looking at this beautiful Irish garden. While I appreciated the beauty, she would have loved to hear about the technical details that went into it’s making.

You can’t capture it with a single picture. Click on the one and see the many if you are interested.

The next day was a travel day. It was raining and the trams didn’t run early enough so we ended up taking a cab to the airport.

Returning to Dublin

We stopped and did the Foxford Mill Tour and bought a few things. I picked up a scarf and set of knives for Margie.

That afternoon we had lunch in Newport and then slogged back to Dublin.

On the Way to Castlebar

Eventually, we were off to Castlebar for our next event. On the way we saw Killery Harbor with mussell farms and some fancy fly fishing lodges along the way. It’s really beautiful country.

On the Way to Castlebar

We checked in at Kenny’s guesthouse that afternoon and then had some great pizza and wine. There was a large party of young Irish women with their mothers at the table next to us and we enjoyed watching them.

That night we saw Freddie White, a really fine Irish songwriter and singer, perform in a very small venue. The show was opened by young woman who sang and played guitar. She was quite good despite a few mistakes. I remember in particular her black patterned stockings with a run in them.

Freddie White came on and did a great show. We sat just a few feet from him and were able to see him play guitar. Like Eric Clapton, he makes the almost impossible look easy. It was a great contrast to watch him perform after the young woman before him. She was good, but he was on a higher plane.

After the show, I got an autographed CD and chatted with him a bit. He has a daughter in Korea teaching English and a son in Boston. I am now one of his fans.

Nick's Boat Under Sail

Nick was a little nervous about taking us out and at first we thought that the adventure might be canceled. The boat needs at least two experienced sailors and Cal and I certainly didn’t qualify. It turned out that Alan had sufficient experience and he convinced Nick that he could operate the wheel while Nick handled the sails.

Arriving from Dave's Boat

We started with tea and cookies in the cabin which I found very civilized and appropriate. Dave then decamped for home and we were off. The seas where fairly calm, but the wind was steady and strong coming from the land. We ran before the wind out of Clifden Bay at a pretty good clip. When we reached the open sea, we turned toward a lighthouse that until recently was manned and then back toward Clifden Bay.

The return into the bay was great fun for the sailors and pretty cold for us landlubbers. We were sailing upwind and had to tack a bazillion times with the wind in our face. It was a far cry from running with the wind behind us in terms of comfort. Nick is a purest and we sailed until we anchored, never turning on the motor except to set the anchor.

Some Jameson to Warm Our Bones

That night Cal and I took Nick, Suzanne, Dave, Eleanor, and Alan to dinner at Mitchell’s Restaurant in Clifden. They have great seafood there. After dinner, we moved the party to a local pub and listened to some music there and had a few pints to polish off a very nice evening.