Milling the Valley Oak

Shawn trims the ends of the felled trunk before quartering the log. I met my friend Shawn Gavin at the old Felta School near Healdsburg the other day to mill a Valley Oak. I had purchased the log from the school after it was felled for safety concerns last September, and have been eager to […]

Reviving the Garden (+ a recipe)

Ene builds towers for her peas to climb. With help from friends we’ve been reviving our vegetable garden over the past few weeks. It’s been about 5 years since we built the raised beds, and with the demands of projects and travel over the past couple of years, the garden has been sorely neglected. The […]

Learning from Sand Patterns

A section of the texture I’ve been carving into my crane sculpture. I’ve learned a lot from studying sand patterns at the beach over the past few months. I’m always astounded at how such beautiful formations result from the erosive interactions of just a handful of elements- the density of different sands, slope of the […]

Fog Studies 3 (systems over routines)

When it comes to making things, I’m drawn to systems over routines. As a craftsman, my default system is tradition. It’s simply easier to keep one foot in the patterns of the past, especially if tradition is viewed as a very malleable template, a set of parameters as opposed to outcomes. Studying the grain of […]

A Ride for Town and Country

two of my Deep Deck ‘completes’, in cold-molded, natural elm (Ulmus Americana) I designed my new series of Deep Deck longboards to be ideally suited for both town and country riding, and Aili and I have been enjoying putting ours to the test as we negotiate the two. Measuring about 44” x 9.5”, the decks […]

Deep Deck Developments

A triad of Deep Deck longboards in American elm, ready for trucks and wheels I’ve been making small batches of my Deep Deck longboard in the background of other projects in the shop, laying up a new deck each day, trimming, sanding and finishing the previous day’s cured laminations. Making decks at this scale has […]