Dr. Gordon Fisher

The bow seat’s reason for being is provide the guide (or rower) a place to sit while rowing from the forward rowing position.  The guide would usually row from this position since his “sport” would be lounging in luxury perched in the stern seat.  The boat’s midships would be awash in camping and cooking gear, hunting and fishing paraphernalia, perhaps an extra oar and certainly a candle lantern and paddle for  “jacking” deer at night. Some provisions would be taken along although the guide would be expected to lead his party to the best hunting and fishing grounds.  The party would be self-sufficient while in the wilderness for at least a week, maybe two.

The bow seat is shown in the photo below.

Guideboat seats are constructed much like cabinets.  The stiles (connecting members) have the tenons that fit into the mortises on the rails (members that run from one side of the hull to the other).  On the bow and stern seats the stiles meet the rails at an angle.  This means that the tenons must be cut so that they enter the mortise at a right angle to the rail.  This can give one gray hairs or render them in a fetal position trying to get all four joints  to fit together tightly.  The slightest mismatch at one joint ripples through the entire structure.  After removing some here and checking the fit and removing some there and checking, the fit is finally “good enough”.  It helps to have good clamps to pull everything together while gluing.

The guideboat’s rear seat has a little seat back.  On many guideboats the stiles on the rear seat are extended rearward by several inches.  This is so that the stiles on the bottom of the seat back can slide between the extended seat stiles.  This is a nice solution to holding the seat back in place.

On the Queen Anne, the boat I have reproduced here, I found no provision for holding the rear seat back in place.  So I made a bracket to hold the seat back but it was not entirely satisfactory.  This time I put two extensions on the rear seat and fashioned them to hold the seat back.  This seems to work fine.

As I mentioned above, some of the boats built by Caleb Chase had an extra half rib with an “ear” to help support the rear seat.  I made a pair of these ribs using the mold for the number 12 rib.

Before the half ribs are fastened to the hull, the rear seat cleats need to be secured.  I found the best way to do this was to attach Pony clamps to the ribs close to where the final cleat position will be.  The cleats go on top of the clamps and the seat on the cleats.  Using a level you then level the seat by moving the clamps up and down.  Once you are satisfied that all is well you drill holes for fastening the cleats and secure them.

The rear seat back on the Queen Anne is rather charming.  It has a rounded rail at the top.  Below are the parts of the seat back before gluing it together.

The final step in attaching the rear seat is to locate the half ribs.  They are positioned half way between the last two ribs, Nos. 11 and 12.  Once I am happy with where they are I run a strip of masking tape down the midships side.  This is the only way to make a mark on the hull once it is varnished.  Then I drill holes for the fasteners from the inside out.  It is much easier than trying to locate everything from outside the hull.

The half ribs are given four coats of varnish and fastened to the hull.

Finally all seats are secured.

Next time, the floor board.

My friend Andy at the Adirondack Museum knows just about everything there is to know about boats.  He grew up in Barnegat Bay in New Jersey where boats were a way of life back then.  He knows every boat on the floor of the Museum’s Watercraft Building and can provide interesting stories about them to any visitor lucky enough to meet up with him.

Andy calls the seats in guideboats their “furniture”.  Indeed guideboat seats have evolved into a sort of furniture as the guideboat itself evolved.  Originally guideboats served as a work boat and were built mainly by guides during the long Adirondack winters.  Any amenities such as caned seats were out of the question.  A thin plank of wood was all that was required back in the early boats.

Later, in the 1870’s and 1880’s, those with great wealth built second homes, called Great Camps, on the shores of Adirondack Lakes.  They were intrigued by the beauty of  guideboats and began to purchase them from local builders.  The demand for the boats grew such that the well known builders like Chase, Grant and the Parson Brothers could hire a five or six man crew to meet the demand.

Caned seats and the caned rear seat back became the standard,  At some point a fold down seat back for the middle seat was introduced and became a must have for some.

There are three seats in an Adirondack guideboat.  One sits and rows from the middle seat when he/she is alone in the boat or when accompanied by at least two other people.  One rows from the forward seat when there is at least one other person in the boat.

Seats rest on cleats made of strips of hardwood that are fastened to the ribs.  I learned not to scrimp on making sure the cleats were hefty enough.  My wife and I were out for a row one day.  She was forward doing the rowing and I was in the rear seat enjoying the scenery.  Seemingly out of nowhere a large power boat roared by us leaving behind a large wake.  Fran wisely turned into the wake and we bobbed like a cork as it passed.  But as the second of three or four  waves passed under us there was a loud crack. The rear seat cleat had broken from the extra force on it as the boat slid down the wave into its trough.  I have beefed up the cleats from 1/2″ square to 1/2″ X 3/4″ stock.

There is another cleat that has nothing to do with the seats.  It is the yoke cleat.  The guides carried their boats using a yoke resting on their shoulders so that the boat could be carried over their heads.  The yoke cleat has long extensions facing forward that are used as handles.

The yoke cleat is not hard to make.  I made mine from 1/2″ inch thick cherry.  After laying out the cleat I drilled a 1 1/4″ hole with a Forstner bit where the yoke fits the cleat.  This gives a perfectly round semi-circle that would be difficult to accomplish any other way.  Then I rounded the edges with a contour plane.

After several coats of varnish, the cleats are ready to be fastened to the ribs.  I use #8 X 1″ oval head brass screws to secure them.

Making the middle seat is the least difficult of the three seats.  It is rectangular, probably the only thing on the boat with right angles.

I use mortise and tenon joinery.  I rigged up my plunge router to make the mortises.  As you can see, I built a box with a spring loaded fence to hold the stock while the mortise is being milled.  The rotating router bit is first plunged into the stock.  Then the stock is pushed to a “stop” to mill the proper length of the mortise.

The tenons are cut on the table saw.  I bought a special jig for the saw that makes this relatively easy to do.

I had a decision to make regarding caning of the seats.  I have caned my guideboat seats in the past.  I absolutely abhor it!  It is not hard to do but I find it tedious and not amenable to my large fingers.  I am just not suited for caning.  One funny thing about caning.  When I show off my guideboats some one is sure to ask if I did the caning.  When I reply that “Yes indeed I did the caning” they are absolutely amazed.  When I explain that caning is the simplest task in making a guideboat they walk away not really believing what they just heard.

So I opted out of the caning and got a friend, Hallie Bond, to do it for me.  As you can see below she did a magnificent job.

The middle seat is the only set that is not fastened to the cleats.  It is removable and can be positioned fore and aft to suit the build of the rower.

One thing to be wary of with middle seat is that it will damage the inside of  the hull if it is allowed to slide sideways.  I use what I call chocks to prevent this from happening.  Chocks are small blocks of wood attached to the underside of each of the two seat rails.

So next time we will deal with the bow and stern seats.  We nearing the end of the long process of guideboat construction.

 

 

One would think that fitting a rather thin sheet of wood into the triangular shape at the bow and stern of a guideboat wouldn’t be all that difficult.  What complicates matters is that the triangle is a “fat” one.  It bulges outward as it follows the line of the gunwale to the stem.

I have chosen to make the decks of bird’s eye maple and cherry.  These possess wonderful “figure” as you will see.  Before I can use this beautiful wood I must reduce the thickness of each parent plank from four quarters (about one inch thick) to a final thickness of 3/16″.

I resaw the planks (cut them lengthwise in two).  I start by using my table saw that is set so that it does not cut entirely through the plank after making two passes (one pass through the plank bottom and then a flip to cut what was the top of the plank).  This leaves a “web” about 1 1/2″ or so thick.  I then cut the two planks free by running the webbed plank through my band saw.  The two planks resulting from this operation are surface planed down to a final thickness of 3/16″.  I now have what boat builders and wood workers call book matched stock.  The figure on one piece is the mirror image of that on the other.

The maximum span of the bow deck is about 18″.  My stock is not wide enough to accommodate a deck that wide.  So I glue the two book matched pieces of maple to a triangular piece of cherry to get the required width.

The decks will be inlayed into their allotted space at each end of the boat so that they are even with the top of the gunwale.  A rabbet must be cut out of the planking adjacent to the gunwale to accept the deck.

Blocks 3/4″ square are then fastened along the bottom edge of the rabbet.  They will accept the fasteners holding the deck in place.

Next, I set the glued up deck stock in position over the gunwales. I draw a line on the deck stock down the outside of the gunwale and cut away the waste.  Now I have a really “fat” deck that must be slimmed down to fit into the rabbet.

I get closer to a fit by scribing a line down one side of the deck material.  This line follows the inner contour of the gunwale and is the width of the gunwale.  Then I switch and do the same on the other side.

I want to err on the side of being too “fat” here since I want the decks to fit tightly between the gunwales.  One nice thing about the triangular shape of the decks is that the apex of the triangle works for you.  If you take too much off in any one part of a side you can remove some material from the rest of  that side and push the triangle towards the stem to get a better fit.

It is is not an easy job to get the decks to fit into their allotted space.  After much sanding a little away here and checking the fit innumerable times I finally am satisfied.

Now to fasten the deck in place.  I use #8 X 3/4″ brass oval head screws to fasten it.  The oval head gives a decorative touch to the deck.  The photo below shows drilling the holes for the deck fasteners.

The midships end of the deck needs to be cut away to follow the contour of the bow.  I let the deck edge extend about 1/4″ out from the deck bridge bow.  Then I make a cap of cherry to fit over the stem end side of the deck.  The photo below shows the deck nearly complete.

As I mentioned before, Chase liked to put a feed thru in the bow decks of his boats for holding a candle lantern or a pennant.  I found one that would work from an outfit called Tendercraft.  I drilled a hole with a Forstner bit and dropped it in.

Here is the finished bow deck.  Notice the figure on the maple.  It appears to me to take the shape of butterflies, one on each side.

One final photo to show the curvature of the decks, in this case the bow deck.

Next time we tackle guideboat “furniture”.

 

The decks on an Adirondack guideboat are a clever way of hiding the carrying handles.  With canoes there is no attempt to hide the carrying handles, they are in plain site.  Indeed there is no need to hide the handles on a guideboat.  But the early guideboat builders recognized that putting decks on their boats could be used to their advantage.

In the Adirondack Museum there is a full-size cutaway model of a guideboat.  It was built by Willard Hanmer.  All the important parts of a guideboat are labelled.  Visitors can push a button to make the model rotate on a longitudinal axis so that all parts of the boat are clearly visible.  At the same time an audio tape plays interpreting what the visitor is seeing.  The narrator explains that “all guideboats are similar in construction”.  Sure enough it is often very hard, if not impossible to tell who built a particular guideboat.  The narrator goes on to say that the decks were where the builder could use his creativity to put his stamp on the boat.  For example, Hanmer liked to put an oblong cutout in his decks so that, when carrying the boat, one’s fingers could wrap all around the handle.  Rushton made a sort of sun burst deck by gluing thin strips of wood together to form a fan-like structure.

Decks on boats made by Caleb Chase were pretty ordinary except for two things.  The first is that on some of the boats he built the deck is crowned.  The crown is not great but it serves to lend a sense of motion to the whole creation.  To see the difference one needs only to compare a guideboat with a flat deck with a crowned deck on one of Chase’s boats.  Of course making a crowned deck adds another level of complexity to the already complex task constructing a guideboat deck.

The other trait of many of the Chase guideboats was that there was often a hole in the bow deck.  The hole was not more than 2″  in diameter.  In the early days it probably served to support a candle lantern used to “jack” deer at night while hunting from the boat.  Later on the hole was adorned with a brass ring.  Its use was now more benign and it supported a pennant or burgee.

So why does constructing a guideboat deck pose such a challenge to the builder?  The reason is that all boats are chock full of curve upon curve.  This is particularly true of a guideboat.  Here the curves are accentuated at bow and stern where the hull still flares out when going upward from garboard to gunwale and the planking is rapidly bending to make its rendezvous with the stem.  So I must be conscious of curves running both horizontally and vertically.  I think boat builders refer to them as complex cures.

I start by making what I call the bow.  The bow is a nearly semi-circular wooden hoop.  I have chosen to make it of maple this time. Fortunately I have a template of the bow I used on a previous boat.  I cut out the bow on the band saw and then smooth it with the long board.  I make sure that the bow is about 3/16″ higher in the center to lend some crown to the deck.

I then remove the waste to form the hoop, or bow.  Next comes shaping the bow so it fits nicely in its appointed place, bow or stern. I lay it up against the gunwale where it is to go and mark where I must cut it off.  As I said before we are not dealing with a straight cut here.  I estimate the angle of the hull at the cut off point with  a sliding bevel and apply that angle to the bow.  Next I make cuts on each side to complete the bow.  Then I keep my fingers crossed and check to see how well it fits.

Before going further with the bow, I make a cross member that, together with the bow, will form what I call the deck bridge.  The cross member has pretty much the same complex angle at each end as the bow.

After much backing and forthing to shape and test the fit, I am finally satisfied with the deck bridge.

The next step is to fasten the bridge in place.  I use #8 oval head brass screws 1 1/2″ long.  I want to be totally confident that the handle will not give way when the boat is being carried.

The next step will be to finish the deck by covering it with a thin sheet of decorative wood. It will hide the deck bridge (handle).   The deck cap, a pie-shaped piece of cherry, will then go over the upper portion of the deck.  Then a brass ring is fitted into the cap and we are done.

All that will happen next time.

The inside of the hull is finally ready for varnishing.  This is an onerous task for several reasons.  There is much prep work to be done before the first drop of varnish can be applied.  Application of varnish is tricky.  It has to go on just right or it will not justify all the work you put into it.

The prep work involves scraping and sanding the planks to smooth them and bring the laps down to a true feather edge.  I use a scraper with a curved blade and 100 grit sand paper stuck onto a large dowel.  The work goes slowly because of the hindrance caused by the ribs.  The ribs form “bays” about 6″ wide.  They cramp and slow the operation.

There is a tradition amongst guideboat builders that before applying varnish the wood should receive a mixture of linseed oil and mineral spirits.  Being something of a doubting Thomas I never subscribed to this practice.  It wasn’t clear to me just what this would accomplish.  Hasn’t one hundred years of varnish research eliminated the need for this practice and whatever benefit it might provide?  I asked a friend of mine, Doc Hank about it.  Hank worked for 30 years for DuPont in research on paint technology.  He said it wasn’t obvious to him how linseed oil could be of benefit here.  He also added that linseed oil is not a stable organic compound and degrades rather quickly.

I remove all the dust and shavings using a shop vac and go over the hull with tack cloth to get the wood as free of dust as possible.  It is recommended by the manufacturer that the first coat of varnish be diluted by about 10 percent.  I apply the first two coats of Epifanes wood finish gloss varnish without sanding between coats.  I can do this with Epifanes as long as the second coat is applied within 72 hours.

The bottom board gets varnished first while the hull is upright and the bottom board is  horizontal.  This prevents runs.  Then I tilt the hull and varnish the tilted side so that I can keep as much of it as possible on a horizontal plane.  Again, I am looking to prevent runs.  Then I tilt the hull the opposite way and do the other side.

As I move along to the third and fourth coats it becomes clear why varnishing is such a vexing job.  Varnishing is very unlike painting where you can see a run or a skip (or holiday).  Varnishing is pretty much flying blind. I helps to bring lots of light to bear on the subject.  I use a 500 watt halogen lamp and look at the coated surface from various angles to try to pick up skips and runs.

Here I am applying the third coat of varnish to the hull.

I had hoped to get away with four coats of varnish on the inner hull.  But after the fouth coat I just wasn’t happy with the appearance.  It was OK but I couldn’t live with just OK.

So I sanded the hull yet again.  Epifanes recommends 320 grit paper.  It turns out that 3M makes a marvelous grade of 320 grit paper.  They claim it lasts 10 times longer than other sand papers.  I believe them.  It just doesn’t clog or wear out like the others.

So here I am using tack cloth after sanding the fourth coat of varnish.

So the final coat of vanish is applied.  I am happy with the result and glad I put in the extra effort.

The next big hurdle is installing the decks.  This will be a major challenge because things have to fit just so.  Stay tuned.

This tool is a true “old friend”.  It has stayed the course for two guideboats and some light weight canoes.  It has never given me a moment’s trouble.  It is my Ryobi 3/8″ portable electric drill.

If you follow the progress of portable electric tools, you know that there is a horsepower race going on. The first tools operated on 12 volt batteries.  Then battery power steadily climbed to where tools with 20 volt batteries are now available.  This has lead to a plethora of portable tools including saws and drivers.

My drill is a thing of the past.  It operates on a 12 volt battery which gives it a great advantage over the newer tools.  It is light.  It weighs only 2 pounds.  When building a guideboat you need to be quite precise in locating fasteners.  It certainly helps to have a drill that is light and easy to position.

Like any old friend it shows the wear and tear of being ready for most anything.  On it there are scrapes and scratches and smears of bedding compound.  One of the original batteries passed away but I was able to find a replacement for a reasonable price.   So I am counting on it for many more years of faithful service.

There are some clean-up details before I can varnish the inside of the hull and truly head for home with this boat.  The rib ends were purposely extended up from the sheer plank and now must be trimmed off to make them flush with that final plank.  I thought I would use a flush cut saw for that task.  The one I have used in the past was a bit flimsy and not suitable for the more demanding work that this require.  I checked out the Japan Woodworker catalog and found a single blade saw (part no. 155648) that should do the trick.

When it arrived I knew right away that it was authentic.

It turned out to be a great buy.  It has just the right stiffness for cutting off the rib ends and cuts on the pull stroke which is nice.  So here it is in action.

As you can see I decided to get a bit fancy and cut the ribs on a slight downward slope.  This turned out to not be such a hot idea.  On several of the ribs I cut into the brass screw fastening the plank to the rib.  Oops!  Well, it reminds me of the fossilized flies I have seen embedded in amber.  I guess it will be a topic of conversation, as they say.

The final duty in “Odds and Ends” was to plug the holes left when the bottom board was fastened to the builder’s jig beam.  This, of course, is a must do.  Otherwise, launching day would become “foundering day”.

I used a 3/16″ dowel and tapped it into the hole.  It fit tightly enough so that no glue was required.

Now on to the tedium of varnishing the inside of the hull.

While I am in the North Country I want to drop in on Keith Austin, owner of Blue Line Hardwoods in Long Lake.  I am hoping to pick up some figured maple for guideboat decks and floorboards.

So what is the significance of the name “Blue Line”?  The Adirondack Park was created in 1892 over concerns that the area was being plundered by timber barons who were clear cutting and leaving the slash ripe for forest fires.  Mud slides and silt runoff from this depredation posed a threat not only to the Erie Canal but also to the Hudson River, a main source of drinking water for New York City.  So in 1892 the New York legislature set aside an area larger than the national parks of Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Canyon, and the Great Smokies to become the Adirondack Park.  The protection of this vast area was strengthened even further by passage of the “forever wild” act in 1895.  This act prevents any logging, mining or other development of any land owned by the State in the Park.  The State owns about 40% of the Park’s land, or 2.4 million acres of the 6 million acre total.  The boundary of the Park is designated by a blue line on maps, hence the name Blue line Hardwoods.

Keith is a 6th generation guideboat builder, having learned the craft from his uncle Bunny. I have known Bunny for some time having spent many enjoyable hours with him on his front porch chatting about guideboats and his family’s history.  According to Bunny, the first of the Austins came to Long Lake from Ferrisburg, VT sometime around 1850.  William Austin set up shop building boats and the craft was passed down from generation to generation to the present time.

Keith’s shop is equipped with up-to-date milling machinery and he has a nice selection of native hardwoods  He also carries some non-native species as well.  As I will explain below, he is starting a line of materials for guideboat construction.

Keith shows me the latest guideboat he is building.  This is boat is being built from patterns used by his great uncle Merlie.  It shows what a fine craftsman Keith is.  The talent for building these boats has indeed been passed down to the latest generation.

This boat is being planked with very fine grained northern white cedar.  When I ask Keith if he has any trouble with it splitting, he says that “yes, that happens sometimes especially when I am backing out a plank”.  He says that Uncle Bunny tells him he needs a “crying chair” so that when something like that happens he can sit in it and weep.

Keith shows me the patterns he is using.  These were passed down from his great uncle Merlie, and probably from even further back.  They are labelled “Merlie Chase” indicating that the master boat builders willingly share their patterns and expertise.

Keith tells me he is beginning to carry a line of materials needed for building a traditional guideboat. These include bottom board stock and flitches, or roots, for making ribs and stems.  I tell him that I need bottom board stock or my next boat.  He finds me a clear piece of quarter sawn white pine 15 feet long and 10″ wide that is perfect a guideboat bottom board.

We then search for through some of his figured maple for something that will make my decks really stand out.  We find a piece of highly figured maple that is striking in appearance.

The next thing I am looking for is some curly, or tiger maple, for floor boards.  We find a nice piece of that too.

The really great thing about purchasing wood from Blue Line is that you can have it in the final milled condition.  I needed the deck stock as 3/16″ material and the floorboards 1/4″ thick.  Keith resawed the four and five quarter stock and then milled it down to the final thickness.  This saved me not only much time but a job I don’t particularly relish.  I felt that the Blue Line charges are very reasonable, especially compared with the prices I pay here in the Delaware-Pennsylvania area.

You can get a hold of Keith at (518) 624-3131 or at his website www.bluelinehardwoods.com

 

While I was in the North Country this time I wanted to take some measurements off the sister ship of the one I am building.  This boat was donated to the Adirondack Museum by the King family some years ago.  To have a look at it I must go to the Museum’s Collection Study and Storage Center (CSSC).

The CSSC was opened in 2000.  Its purpose is to keep safe the Museum’s vast treasure of Adirondack cultural artifacts and allow researchers easy access to them.  The CSSC building is impressive with 400,000 square feet of climate controlled space.  To enter the building is a trip back in time.  It is like going into your Aunt Minnie’s attic; the collection includes just about every item that had some Adirondack historical or cultural basis.  There are collections of wood stoves, chain saws, church organs, beds from Dr. Trudeau’s sanatorium in Saranac lake, fire engines, and on and on.

I had a personal involvement with the CSSC during the time I spent as a full time resident of Long Lake.  Hallie Bond, then the curator of watercraft at the Museum, asked for assistance in moving the wooden boat collection to the new storage facility. At that time the boat collection was housed in a haphazard way.  Some of the boats were stashed in bins in the basement of the main building while others were barely protected from the weather in makeshift sheds across the road from the Museum’s main building.

So in early 2001, a gathering consisting of Hallie and several volunteers transported the boats down the hill to the CSSC where they were processed before moving them to their allotted storage location.  Key to all of this was that they must first pass through the watchful eye of the Museum’s conservator, Doreen.  Doreen’s job is to see that all the items in the Museum’s collection remain intact.  That means protecting them from mildew, rust, fungus, moths and any other thing of a destructive nature.

We ensured that all the the boats in the Museum’s collection at that time went through the conservator’s lab.  Here they were carefully cleaned and inspected and anything of special note recorded.  Then off the went to the Hall of Wooden Boats, as I call it.

For anyone that loves wooden boats this has to be a pilgrimage site.  Here you are surrounded by exquisite wooden boats of every description.  It is hard to walk down any of the isles because you can’t help stopping to examine this gem or that beauty.  It is truly an overwhelming experience for a lover of wooden boats!  You can go on a tour of the CSSC during the summer months.  Check with the visitor’s center to find out when they are running tours of the facility.

So Doreen gladly obliges my request to check out the Santanoni guideboat that Tom and Susan King donated to the Museum in 1972.  Here is a photo of Doreen preparing to move the boat out into the isle.

What I here for is to measure the locations of the oar sockets, or straps, on this boat.  I have always felt that the the location of the straps in the forward rowing position doesn’t quite allow a full stroke of the oars.  So I will double check that.

We pull the boat out onto the isle.  She is a beauty, made entirely of Spanish cedar, just like my latest boat.

The view of the bow shows what a fine craftsman Chase was.   I really love that the deck has a crown to it.  It lends  sense of motion to the craft.

The stern shows, with little doubt, that Chase was its builder.  The aftermost rib has an “ear” on it to support the stern seat cleat.

My eye catches sight of another Chase boat.  It is the blue boat on the left in the first photo above.  It may be a very old boat built by Chase.  It is so old that apparently iron screws, rather than brass ones, were used in its construction.  Museum authorities believe it was built in the 1880’s for William West Durant and that it made the rounds of his Great Camps; Pine Knot, Uncas, Sagamore, Arbutus Lake and finally Eagle Nest. But they caution that it could have been one of four that Durant commissioned of Chase to go with the lodge he was building at Arbutus Lake in 1898.  I guess that if  one could verify its age, ie. by its having iron screws, then that would rule out the second hypothesis.

Here is a stern view of the Chase blue boat.  Chase often painted his boats blue, especially early on.  The aftermost rib here is a scribe half rib (it has no foot) and it has an ear to support the seat cleat.

Every February my wife, Fran and I head to the Adirondacks for a two to three week stay.  Our neighbors here in Delaware think we are just a bit crazy since most people are headed in the opposite direction this time of year.  But Fran has a quilting workshop where she and her quilting buddies are reunited once a year.  I like to go to get a real taste of winter.  I can always count on deep snow this time of year and at least one good snowstorm.  During this trip I also plan to visit the Adirondack Museum’s Collection Storage and Study Center and a local hardwood dealer.  These two excursions will be covered in separate posts.

Little did we know when we arrived in Long Lake in early February that this February was to be one of the coldest on record for the northeast United States.  In fact it was within a degree of setting the record for the coldest February ever.

Last year Long Lake started a tradition know as Ice Fest.  Local businesses and organizations hire an ice sculptor to portray various town themes in ice.  Below is an ice sculpted float plane that was commissioned by Helm’s Aero Service.  This Long Lake float plane sightseeing business was started by Tom Helm’s father, who served in WWII as a crew member on B-17’s flying missions over Europe.  The business is now in its 60th year!  Long Lake natives tell me that, for them,the first sign that spring has finally arrived is the sound of Tom’s plane making its first flight after a very long winter.

As you can see from the first photo, the logo for Long Lake is the black bear.  Hoss’s Country Corner, a general store, commissioned the artist to carve an ice bear, complete with a fish in its mouth.

The town’s close association with guideboats and guideboat builders prompted the Long Lake Historical Society to propose a guideboat theme.  Wallace Emerson (1874-1953) learned to build guideboats from his uncle George Stanton.  George had earlier gone to Old Forge, NY to teach Dwight Grant how to build them.  Wallace opened his own shop in 1905 and apparently built some extra wide guideboats for fishing and hauling.  My neighbor, Tom Bissell, a 5th generation Long Laker, recalls that his father, Talbot remembers Wallace towing a fleet of guideboats up the lake every spring to the Sagamore Hotel.  Sadly the Sagamore is no longer in existence.

The weather in Long Lake this February was brutally cold. On many nights the temperature dipped to -20 F (-29 C).  On some days the temperature never reached 0 F (-18 C).  On some days the temperature would start out above zero and them slowly descend below zero.  Add to that the wind chills were often far below zero.

The following are some photos taken around town.

A picnic bench at the summer ice cream stand.

The snow seems to take on a plastic nature.

We have about 2 1/2 feet of snow on level ground, much more on plowed drifts.

When the time comes to pack up and go home the thermometer reads -20F when we awake at 6:30 am.

 

This causes all kinds of unexpected havoc.  To winterize the camp, I have to turn off the main water valve that is outside near the lake.  Once that is done I must open the two outside spigots so that no water is left in them.  The hot water spigot opens easily but not the cold one.  I turn the water back on and deluge the obstinate valve with hot water.  No luck.  It won’t open.  We decide to train a hair dryer on it from the inside the house.in hopes that this will thaw it out.  After about an hour it finally opens.

In the meantime we need to drain the hot water heater tank.  A short hose leads from the hot water tank to a small hole in the foundation.  Usually the water from the heater drains into this hole with no problem.  We soon realize that the ground under this hole is frozen solid and the water from the tank is spilling out onto the floor.  Since having 60 gallons of water flow out onto the basement floor is not an option, we start a bucket brigade to haul the hot water away out into the yard.  After a two hour delay we are finally ready to say goodbye and think about what a lovely sight will greet us upon our return in June.

I just got the latest on the February temperatures for the New York State’s northeast cities that lie near the Adirondack Park.  It is not surprising that all experienced record low temperatures for the month of February.  The average temperatures for these cities for February are:

Buffalo 10.9 F ( -11.7 C)

Syracuse 9.0 F (-12.8 C)

Ithaca 10.2 F (-12.1 C)

Binghamton 12.2 F (-11 C)

On a normal year Buffalo would have an average temperature for February of 26.3 F (-3.2 C).  Syracuse and Ithaca each had 14 days of zero Fahrenheit ( -17.8 C) or below temperatures in February.

The Hudson River, which begins in the Adirondack Park, is frozen solid above New York City with ice up to 1 1/2 feet thick.  The US Coast Guard is keeping the shipping lanes open up to Albany by regular patrols of ice breaking ships.