Windline Pacific's Woodworks News & Articles
Dispatch from Hamakua 11/13/09
It’s blowing strong offshores and there is snow on Mauna Kea, up a few miles from our backyard, and a very big and gnarly east swell running. We are in the midst of our first Kona storm of the winter season, signalling the imminent arrival of swells from the west, Thanksgiving, Christmas, family time, and visitors to our beautiful islands.
The shop has stayed busy as the economy stuggles. Like most small business’s I have had to lay off my back up people, who both found other work very fortunately. The downside is that I am now doing everything from milling, fitting and assembly, sanding, finishing and shipping myself. That is also the upside however, as I am finding more satisfaction in doing every stage of my projects and while our work has always been very good I now see it as consistently excellent (apologies for tooting my own horn). During this last five or six months I have been able to revisit some of my tooling, procedures and finish work and improve things at each stage. Back in the day, when I travelled on my boat, I worked alone at shipwrighting and always enjoyed it, now I seem to be back to that kind of relationship to my work.
The furniture repair and restoration work has been steady and interesting. Right now I am rebuilding what we call a directors chair; however, this one comes of the U.S.S. Missouri and was used as part of the band set up, maybe a chair for the trombone player, who knows. Given its obvious age this chair was no doubt present at the surrender ceremonies of W.W. II, a lot of history in this simple and humble old piece of woodwork. I am also working on a custom 40” lazy Susan for a client on Oahu, this in addition to keeping my inventory up for the various galleries I supply throughout the islands. A small project which is nearing completion is the making of a custom hat and visor with the owners boat name on them for a client on Bainbridge Ilsand in Washington State. It is a fun connection as I lived there in the early seventies and we talked story for quite a while about the kinds of changes Eagle Harbor, where I lived and they keep their boat, has experienced.
We are holding steady on what we offer: however, one change is to our chess and checker boards which are now being done in Mango and Koa rather than Maple and Koa. I stay away from Mango generally as it is prone to bugs and very inconsisitent in appearance. Mid summer I came across a small run of it which is curly, and holds a lovely blonde light so I bought it, dried it, milled it, and am now working with it. They are truly island chess and checker boards now.
All in all I feel very fortunate to have work that I enjoy and a family who backs me up during these challenging times
If you see something you like and have questions feel free to call or e-mail and have a great winter!