Summer School 2016 Review

Everything started like this:

Somewhere in the south of Chile a few crazy guys (and hopefully gals too) meet in the middle of the forest to build something together.

That something is not just a wooden shelter, but it will have wood. There will be japanese tools but is not about the tools. We will sharpen not only our blades but our skills. There will be talk, food and rivers. Work, layout and planning. Lots of cooking. Saw sharpening.

Well, we didn't have saw sharpening since the time didn't help but for the rest the description was quite accurate. We were told crazy more than a few times; we built something together despite the structure not being standing at the moment; our skills are sharper and mistakes will not be forgotten; there was talk, food and rivers, a lake to swim in, and a volcano to look at. (Not as much fun as I anticipated since the work was way heavier than what I thought.)

We left for unknown seas, unknown parts of ourselves, and we reached the limit of our forces, defeated by the material but somehow happy of having given it all in the way. We have built a bond, and once that quincho is standing on the land, it will be a token of that friendship. And may the friendship last longer than the joints this friendship has made.

I wanted to somehow summarise the ten days we spent there, but having arrived home and submerged myself in daily life has taken the urgency of this off a bit.

We have tickets for 11th of March, so wait for more news on this white whale called quincho. It'd definitely not the last one we are making, that much is true. (I may be getting a large makita circular saw, a jointer and a planner though.)

To be continued...

The Whale

The morning of the seventh day dawned fair and fresh, and once more the solitary night-man at the barn was relieved by crowds of the daylight look-outs, who dotted every post and almost every bench.

"D'ye see him?" cried I; but the whale was not yet in sight.

It appeared soon enough:

 at 9:30am we had our first lost, Nico lost his arm to a chisel-shark and slowly drifted away to the land of the tea drinkers.

Soon after David was called by the mermaids and lost his mind to their song. Keiran just kept at it, pairing nothingness into nothingness to add nothingness to the posts.

I lost the use of my legs and arms, my mind was trembling, we built a sauna:

People left, we had a day of rest and animations and today we found this and managed to put the tenons half way in.

We are traveling to santiago tonight, have a weeks of rest, come back in march to put things up. We are defeated by the white timber whale and need to heal our wounds, learn our lessons, let time pass over and have backs again that can work with this mass of wood and joints. 

Stay tuned for the second chapter of this saga. 

Sunday of hot springs

The name says it no? We had pains. Like everywhere and in different amounts, my favourite one was on the ass muscles. Keiran had lower arms pain. David lower back and Astrid hands. Schoolboy was feeling just fine, fucking teenagers.

So we took the rain with us and drive 37km to the hot springs.

It was good. Better than good in fact.

No pictures since it was that good. But imagine, a river, forests both sides, water steaming and hot sands. Cannot get much better eh?

Before that we did some try out and it didn't fit, as it was supposed to. The pieces should not fit at this stage since we still need one more housing and some chamfers.

We had laid out the housing wrong, as you can see in this picture. (Doesn't it look great? that was marked by schoolboy I think, he likes pen and chamfers. Also, remember this was a summer school? well, we are all learning here. For example, look at the lines of ink. Messy, isn't it? too much water or too little, too fast pulling the line, not enough pressure on the silk, waiting too long to mark the line... it's full of subtleties that you need to go trying once and again to grab its flow. At the beginning of the week I was the only one marking, now we are splitting the task since the boys are starting to get it too. Sorry for the long derridarean parenthesis.)

And this is the place where the thing will go. The thing is called quincho btw, pronounce it as king-cho

The waters made their magic and my ass pain is gone. We could sit and talk in the night, not only fall asleep after work, wake up, grab food and sleep again. Moods are better. Monday will be a long day.

Sorry for these seemingly half thought posts, I just want to keep track of what's going on each day to have a better idea later of how things went... a week now seems like a year, and our eyes see end grain being pared away in the food. See you tomorrow, with hopefully a square in our hands.

Getting there — Dub special

Greeting for the sisters brothers and rastas. Today is a dub special. Lots of delay and reverb, paring again and again and again... dubstyle.

But first of all, the food:

cast iron, olive oil and veggies.

In the morning I gave it a try with the saw, missed the line for 1mm or so when going out of the timber. Helped a lot, like gave us more stamina to keep on paring the rest of the day.

 Don't see any housing

 Central supports plus fedders

 and it used to be larger but they cut it.

 Resident architect

 Starts to look like something. Patterns repeating, being serious since they are a series,

 David spen the whole day hand sawing. Brave boy

 end of the day

 no without blood and tears and dub

 And this is a beautiful example of chilean joinery, the famous dovetail half gap bevel scare joint

Sorry the poor lighting, but I guess you get the idea. We think it was a communication problem when the boss said cut it at 45 degrees.

Free day

We are in puerto varas enjoying beer, coffee and free wifi. Had burgers for lunch.

This are the pics of the last 2 days.

Gonna get more pics of the barn soon, and maybe some measurements.

And that axe picture is for you Don.


Planing bevels:

 Hommer kanna

 one day of work

 Inspectors

 Barn. That's not a half lap, it's more like cut 18in of that 20in beam and put something on top. Everything is eaten by termites btw.

Hard kanna, needs some cooking. Didn't work.

 honing the axe's edge

 more volcano

 where we sleep

 nazi joke

 explaining bevels, geometry and sqrt 2

 art

 work

 Somebody said gang cutting? Look at the concentration of the boys

 and my favourite shot till now

 yesterday. There's a mistake there.

 but not there

We are a bit on the short of time side, so from tomorrow we are using the skill saw to speed up the chiseling and cross cutting. And it doesn't even feel like cheating to be honest. Cut the shit out of those beams and get out of here. 

I asked David, our visiting architect to measure the barn and make a drawing of it, maybe that can be the next life project.  

Wanna ask something? just comment and I try to reply next time I get internet. 

Volcano

So, here we are.

Pardon the typos but we had lake and wine already, woodworking is a hard job.

Ok, maybe we drank too much already so there's nothing to say. After it's done I do a write up.