Ken is a hero to me. I deeply respect the man and his work. I’ve learned many lessons from him, beginning with the
coffee cans that I mentioned in
an earlier post.
He’s a difficult man to work with. You do it his way or you’re wrong. And even if you do it his way, you won’t do it as well as he thinks you should have. I’ve heard him berating people who with all good intentions were just trying to help. I once offered to help him install a dock. Though he respects me and the skills that I have, he smiled and shook his head and said, “No thanks, I want to stay friends with you.”
So is he a meticulous perfectionist? No. Are his projects precious works of art? No. Does he have a unique method, a signature style? No, and no. But these are the wrong questions. Does he build to last? Yes. Has he survived over 90 years in a hardscrabble corner of the mountains, weathering the Great Depression and raising two fine boys while building what needed to be built for whatever meager budget was available, making the best of it, earning the respect of everyone he’s ever worked for? Yes. Absolutely.
I read many woodworking blogs. They inspire and instruct me with photos of wonderful carvings, inlaid patterns, perfect dovetails, handmade tools. But they rarely talk about the meat-and-potatoes of carpentry: Get it done. On time. On budget. In a workmanlike manner that won’t fall apart. Which is what Ken has been doing for nearly a century.
Check out the dock he wouldn’t let me help him with. It wouldn’t be boastful to say I could build one just as good. Possibly better. But he wouldn’t let me help because, for example, if you don’t tighten the bolts enough, they’ll slip, and if you tighten the bolts too much, you’ll strip the threads. How can he be sure they’re tightened just right unless he does it himself? And Ken wants it right. He builds to last. You’ve seen it
in his barn.
Now, here’s a cabin he built about 1940:
It’s still sound. I sleep in it every summer. We replaced the roof shingles a couple of years ago. I’ve repaired the foundation, which is simply cedar posts on flat rocks:
When I began the repair, I was amazed that he’d built a cabin on flat rocks that lay on top of the ground. I thought you were supposed to dig a hole below frost line (which is about 60 inches here) to prevent frost heave. Ken patiently informed me that for the time and money available, a flat rock was the way to go. He built that cabin 7 years before I was born. Now I’m 61, and the cabin still stands. The cedar posts were rotting at the bottom; the cabin was out of level. But now I’ve fixed those little problems, and maybe the fix will be good for another 68 years of Adirondack freeze and thaw.
Here’s Ken’s toolbox:
No dovetail joinery here. Wood scraps, probably recycled, joined by nails. And here are the tools he carries in that box:
Nothing fancy or top-of-the-line. Here’s a house Ken built:
And here’s a boathouse he rebuilt when the original was in a state of collapse (and he rebuilt it, of course, with logs he’d salvaged from somebody’s old barn):
Here’s a corner of that boathouse:
It’s possibly the most beautiful building Ken ever made, and there was a flaw in how he made it. But this blog entry is getting too long, so I’ll continue later.
This one's more about farming than carpentry, but there is that auger bit along with the hay pulley, horseshoe, and bridle. And, most fascinating to me, there is the barn wood - texture, paint, notches - telling a piece of a story that covers three centuries.
Resting in the light of a window, tools for a strong back.
Continuing my homage to honest labor: Here's to hardware and hard work. There's beauty in good tools, and there's beauty in rough people.
There’s beauty in old hardware, and there’s beauty in hard work. I’m going to stop trying to rationalize my fetishes and simply state them as fact. There’s beauty in good tools; there’s beauty in rough people.
There's at least one crosscut, rip, all-purpose, hack, fine-blade, coarse-blade, and bow saw plus a back saw that is nearly hidden. Then he needs a table saw and a variety blades:
In the barn he keeps a buck saw (along with horse bridles, though he no longer keeps horses):
another bow saw (along with a child's sled and some insulators):
and spare blades (each blade having a different purpose):
He has a couple of two-man saws:
and a couple of spare blades. 
Of the two blades shown above, the deeper, rounder blade in back is for cross-cutting (the extra thickness makes it stiffer, less likely to bend) and the front blade is for tree-felling (less depth makes it easier to insert wedges behind the blade to prevent binding). Both blades are hybrids of peg-and-raker teeth (the single-point teeth in pairs or sets of four) and M teeth (the double-pointed teeth):
There's a fascinating comparison of the two types of sawteeth (fascinating, I suppose, to a select few of us) at this Forest Service website.
In the case of the boathouse, it buckled at one corner. Over the years the logs had softened until the notches no longer could resist the outward force of a roof covered with snow.
You rarely see anything bolted, screwed, or glued that he built.
I’m the opposite, rarely using nails when there’s an alternative, but I can’t argue with his results. What Ken makes, stays. I wish I could say the same for everything I’ve built.
You'll find Ken's work all around Silver Lake, from a stair rail to a split rail fence.
I’m still learning from Ken. This summer when I was photographing his work shop, I noticed two jugs, side by side. One was marked "Linseed Oil" and one was marked "#10"
Later, when it was too late to ask him about it, I learned that Ken sometimes used motor oil as a wood preservative instead of linseed oil. When he built this cabin 40 or 50 years ago, he used motor oil on the cedar shingle siding, and it still looks okay:
Next summer, I hope to ask him why he did that.
Ken is a hero to me. I deeply respect the man and his work. I’ve learned many lessons from him, beginning with the coffee cans that I mentioned in an earlier post.
It’s still sound. I sleep in it every summer. We replaced the roof shingles a couple of years ago. I’ve repaired the foundation, which is simply cedar posts on flat rocks:
When I began the repair, I was amazed that he’d built a cabin on flat rocks that lay on top of the ground. I thought you were supposed to dig a hole below frost line (which is about 60 inches here) to prevent frost heave. Ken patiently informed me that for the time and money available, a flat rock was the way to go. He built that cabin 7 years before I was born. Now I’m 61, and the cabin still stands. The cedar posts were rotting at the bottom; the cabin was out of level. But now I’ve fixed those little problems, and maybe the fix will be good for another 68 years of Adirondack freeze and thaw.
No dovetail joinery here. Wood scraps, probably recycled, joined by nails. And here are the tools he carries in that box:
Nothing fancy or top-of-the-line. Here’s a house Ken built:
And here’s a boathouse he rebuilt when the original was in a state of collapse (and he rebuilt it, of course, with logs he’d salvaged from somebody’s old barn):
Here’s a corner of that boathouse:
A bottle jack operates by inserting a steel bar into one of the upper holes and screwing the top part upward while the base remains in place. Here’s one with the threads showing:
I don’t know how old it is, but the door to which it is attached is part of a barn that was built around 1880 using material salvaged from an even older barn. The latch looks hand-forged, and perhaps the U-bolt was, too. I’m sure the U-bolt and latch were created at different times and only later united for the purpose of holding the barn door shut. No lock, of course. It was simply a cow barn. The wood is the original old cedar, recycled from the older barn. The webbing was added as weather-stripping at some point a long time ago. The nails are round, not square-cut antique. Nothing precious, nothing pretty. But Doc, I feel strangely happy looking at that picture.
It’s another door, same barn. The cedar was painted white sometime before 1935, sometime later than 1880. The wood was milled using a great big circular saw in somebody’s ancient sawmill leaving those large-diameter kerf marks. The remains of the original latch are visible, a raggedy square of leather. The hook latch must have been added later, though long enough ago that it has worn a groove in the wood as the door swung open and closed. The mold speaks of freeze-thaw cycles and of warm moist animal-heated air seeping through the cracks to the frigid outdoors. Near the latch the paint has worn off and the wood has worn smooth from the friction of fingers, of white-breath mornings and pink sunset evenings tending to cows day after day, year after year, decade after decade. I swear, Doc, it gives me goose bumps.
It also employs a chain. Have I mentioned that I love old chains?
And all forms of old hooks and clasps?
Ken thought I was nuts to be wandering around his barn taking all these photos. So I guess you could say that Ken has already psychoanalyzed me. We’re still friends, anyway.
Oh darn, our time is up. In the next post, Doc, I’ll confess to another, perhaps even stranger, passion.
