If wood could talk..

Posted on October 28, 2007

As far as I can remember, wood has always triggered in me pictorial or sensorial memories or associations. Everybody knows the saying “If trees could talk”. Well, what about if wood would have a soul ?…Lets say its soul is what I imagine, remember  or associate when touching, looking , smell or hear about a given type of wood. Somebody mentioning to me the word “Acaccia” and it automatically brings me back 50 years when helping my Dad cut acaccia trees in our 2 acres private forest in France. My Dad used that wood to shape spikes for cart wheels. Smelling freshly cut dried oak reminds me of the oak lumberyard I always went hiding in my youth. Maple of course reminds most people of Canada. Looking at poplar wood and I see rows of beautiful and proud poplar trees lining some French roads. I can see them bending under the wind and I also see crows flying into it to tend to their nest.

Fishing canoe with contemporary sprit sail

Posted on October 28, 2007

 Hawaiian Fishing canoe with sail.  Here it is, and considering that this is a first, I am quite content with. However I am still debating whether this sail is a balanced lug or gaff-sail. Maybe somebody can help me on this subject. I researched this sail for many hours in order to get a clearer picture about its rigging. This would have helped me to locate the type of sail the Hawaiian used in the last two and half centuries. But for sure it certainly was not something fancy, nor complicated considering the tools, materials and means available. What puzzled me most was whether the rope going up 4/5   length of the mast served to lower or raise the sail or simply to raise the yard in order to take the wind. I tend to believe that the yard was balancing on the mast by a simple system of goosenecks or boom iron and that there was no halyard so to speak off, but just a rope to control the yard. The boom, certainly, was attached and rotating on the mast with jaw and parral, something I tried to imitate on the model. The panels on the sail are made out of paper thin Cedar and lemon wood and bend with the help of a toppinglift. As for the hull on this model, it is carved out of some extremely curly Koa.  The stand of this model has its own little history, which you can read about in the category “Woods of Hawaii” in this same blog.

RECYCLING KOA

Posted on October 22, 2007

This is a follow up on my post dated October 8th titled “Recycling or Dumping” I guess you may want to know what happened to the Koa that was cut along H2 Freeway. Well, not getting anywhere with the agencies and organizations I had lodged my complains about the situation, I decided to take matters in my own hands and call up the landscaping company who did the job. To my great surprise, the managment of the company was very eager to give the wood to anybody who may want to have it, rather than mulch it. I called up a few woodworking collegues and illico presto, we went with our pick ups to have them loaded with all the Koa accacia and some formosa they had cut. Some of this wood will sail far away across the world in the form of canoe models, some will end up as furniture and admired for generations to come. Like we love to say in France “Tout est bien qui finit bien” or in my mother’s tongue “Ende Gut, Alles Gut”.

HAWAIIAN LASHINGS and the MENEHUNE

Posted on October 20, 2007

 Lashing gunnel to hull on model canoe.

Can I say this ? “A Hawaiian canoe is only as beautiful as his lashings” How does that sound ? I think that canoe carvers, paddlers and sailors would agree with me.  Its like to say the rigging of the old sailing ships was what made them so fascinating and mysterious. Whenever I am in the process of lashing a model canoe, which was the case today, it still surprises me how easy the procedure is for me but at the same time I am conscious that it took me 15 years to be able to accomplish a whole range of Hawaiian type lashings.  I have to point out that I do lash all my models with the same type lashing executed on the life size canoe, whether this is an Opelu type canoe or the Hokulea or any other canoe. The only difference resides in the size of the thread or cord, and the number of passes. Whereby the iako of a racing canoe is attached to the hull and spreader  with 4, sometimes even 5 passes, I do only 3, maybe 4 on the larger models. I said “easy” for the more common type lashings, but the lashing of the forward boom on the Hokulea as well as its stearing paddle can still make me somewhat impatient. Those are real tricky ones . If you have ever worked on the Hokulea you know that you can climb below the forward and stern tops or manus, and pull those darn cords…but not so on a model…and still it needs to look as if some menehune did climb into the model and do the miniature job. The above picture illustrates a typical ancient Hawaiian lashing gunnel to hull that I did recently on a canoe model commissioned by the Kahala Resort. If the procedure required countless hours to execute on a real size canoe, it requires a few days on a model. The very beautiful geometrical pattern of this lashing is only visible on the inside of the canoe, whereby when you look to the other side , which is the exterior of the hull, nothing of this lashing does show here. The menehune’s work…

Cuban Mahagony or Monkeypod

Posted on October 20, 2007

People always ask me where I get my wood from. Well, yes, I get my 2x 4’s from the hardware store  like all of us, but what about the Koa, the Milo, the Hau or Jackfruit and many others ?.. I like to hike, to scout places and in so doing since many years I know  “my trees” but the big majority of those are not for cutting .But others, which needed to be cut down either for liability or landscaping reason, I often ask the tree cutting company to let me have the wood.  Not all  tree cutting companies like to have to mulch or dump  the more rare and exotic trees. And it so happened lately that I got a phone call about a huge Monkeypod tree to be cut in Mokuleia and whether I would like to have a look at it once the tree is on the ground. To my enormous surprise it was not a Monkeypod tree but a Cuban Mahagony tree. The base of the trunk was 5 feet wide.  Part of the heart of the trunk was rotten but everything else was really beautiful . Nearly all the wood making up the trunk was fiddleback curly. It took me 4 week ends to chain saw mill that tree. Do I have a lot of Magagony ? Enough to last me a life time.

Crab claw or Lug sail

Posted on October 15, 2007

For a change, I am in the process of making a model of a Hawaiian fishing canoe equipped with a lug sail rather than the more common, and ancient, crab claw type sail. Indeed, once the Islands were discovered by Captain Cook and trade started to take place, the English traded many European commodities and goods like cloth, cannons, tools against sandelwood, breadfruit etc. with the Hawaiian. Slowly, the crab claw sail made with pandanus (lauhala) mattings became replaced with cloth and its shape the one of the small European wooden barges. The canoes of Raiatea were equiped with a similar type sail during the same period, although the rig is distingished by having a stick that goes diagonally up to hold the peak of the sail which makes them do be a sprit sail rather than the more unsofistacated lug sail.So far I have never seen a Hawaiian canoe model equipped with a lug or gaff sail and I am really excited to see how it will look like. 

Adze find confirms Hawaiian voyages

Posted on October 12, 2007

Was the titel of an article written in the Honolulu Advertiser dated October 7th 2007. I quote “Australian researchers have found the first physical evidence validating centuries of oral history that the first Hawaiians were skilled navigators who sailed back to Polynesia- and brought rocks from Hawai’i that were turned into critical wood-cutting tools.” We are talking about 1300 AD.” This brings me right away back to my discussion about whether the ancient Hawaiian were capable to cut logs into planks to cover the deck of their canoe. Some of those canoes were up to about 80 feet long. We know they used the following tools: the pump drill, the adze, clamps, hammerstone, rubbing stones, caulking tools, chisels, even paintbrush. The adze been a wood cutting tool, one has to imagine that the ancient Polynesians were quite capable to cut planks out of logs, given time, and time they had plenty, as well as laborers. We know that whole villages were involved in the making of a voyaging canoe.

Recycling or dumping

Posted on October 8, 2007

This morning, when opening the Honolulu Advertiser I came across the article entitled “Cut-down trees dumped alongside H-2″, written by Reach Mike Leidemann, at mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com. It so happen that every Sunday morning I go hiking with my dog, and in particular I like to scout out places alongWaikalaniDrive

Valley, which goes from Kam Hwy, and underneath H-2 towards

Koolau

Range. I remembered that the medium section of the H-2 freeway bridge crossing Waikalani Drivehas been cleared of trees and brushes lately, certainly at the same time those famous Albizia trees were cut , mostly for no other reason than for a well connected tree cutting company to make a fast and easy buck, but this is my personal opinion. If it is really about erosion and liability, than the agencies in question should remove the Eucalyptus trees which are famous to drain the soil and create erosion. Albizia, on the other hand does just the opposite, its very large and solid root system keeps the dirt in place. It is also a favorite tree for a variety of birds. I also remembered that Koa (Acacia koa) and Formosa Koa (Acacia confusa Merr) and some other variety of hard wood was growing in that area. Some other people knew about this as well, in particular Bart Potter, a well known tree cutter and member of the Hawaii Forest & Industry Association. I was curious to know what happened to all those trees and went scouting the place early this morning. I was not prepared for what I discovered and would have never thought that something of that nature would ever be allowed to happen on this

Island.  Every tree and brush was cut down, but how..Trees were cut down 2 to 3 feet from the ground, leaving hundreds of tree stumps like some hurricane struck landscape. It was clear also that none of the tress or brushes was ever collected to either mulch or bring to the dump, they were thrown all over the place. In some instances, the cut trunks or branches were just dumped down ravines. But what filled my heart with outrage was the fact that the various types of Koa trees and other hardwood trees have all been cut down. I knew those trees were no danger to nobody, whether to the structure of the bridge itself, not to the circulation above. So why cut them ?? I noticed that some cut trees had markers on them, either orange or yellow, but whatever the color, all those trees were cut down. Now nearly every school kid learns in school that Koa is a rare tree and its wood precious. But it seems that the agencies and companies most concerned with trees alongside our roadways do not know what are Koa trees, or what is a rare or precious wood. And the latter is only interested in the bottom line, not wood, really. All this leads to a wider question; isn’t there really anybody, amongst either the City& County or State agencies , responsible and competent to advise the hired tree cutting companies which trees to cut or not to cut ? Obviously we do not have foresters on our islands responsible for managed tree cutting, like it is the case in Germany,

France and most European countries. But if nothing of that sort, State or City & County should at least show kokua, or be the good shepherd when it comes to recycling wood, and recycling shall not just mean “mulching”. For most woodworkers on our

Islands, recycling wood means collecting cut trees, dress its dried wood, and make some of the most beautiful pieces of furniture or Art out of it.  And if anybody wonders what can be done with “recycled wood”, just visit the annual juried woodworking  exhibition, or HAWAII’S WOODSHOW  in

Honolulu.  City & County, and State should really set aside some space to collect and store some of the cut down rare tress and auction them off on a regular basis rather than mulch what could have been a beautiful Hawaiian Kou calabash, or a Koa rocking chair, or a

Milo table. Having said all this, I still wonder what will happen with those cut Koa trees…? They shall not end up as mulch. Please help !

A chicken story

Posted on October 6, 2007

The world is small. I had those 5 bantam chicks I needed to find a new place for because they consisted of 3 roosters and 2 hens, actually they were just 3 hens a day before but my neighbors hunting’ s dog made short, very short “schrift” of one of them….The 3 roosters were to much for my wife’s ear…who needs a good night’s sleep to be able to perform in her duty as a banker. I liked those roosters, especially Coco, the black one. Not so much Zebra, mind you, or Turkey. One of the hen was a kind of “silky’, fluffy white chick, very tame. I asked my daughter if she would not mind placing an add and some pictures about those poor hens and roosters onto Craigslist.  A la bonheur, it did not take long for my feathery family to find a potential Samaritan. What a luck considering that most roosters are ending their days in a fighting arena. Malia, I have to say, was the lady Samaritan, and if you ask me where she leaves I would have to tell you at some beautiful place in the mountains, surrounded by a goat, a miniature horse, many chicken, 2 belly pigs, and many other spoiled creatures. Malia lives nowhere else than in the beautiful, very sweet, romantic, selfsufficient little house my good friend John Gonczar build for his family in the Koolau Range. John left Oahu a few years ago and resides now near Seattle. You all know where John used to  and now Malia lives…its there where there is that large green pasture on the slope of the Koolau Range when you drive underneath the “Pineaple Road” bride on H2. Malia is the sweet and beautiful lady taking care of the elephant and other animals at the Honolulu Zoo.

POSITION OF THE AMA

Posted on October 6, 2007

Many times I was asked why is it that the ama, or what is more commonly called the float on an outrigger canoe, is placed on the left side of the canoe and not on the right side. It needs to be said that the position of the ama is always on the left side of the canoe across Oceania, as well as in the Comores, the Nicobar Islands, the ratnagiri canoe from India, the Maldives Islands, Ceylon etc. And if not on the left side, Madagascar and the Philippines have double outriggers, however those double outrigger are propulsed by sails and not paddles. Some have told me that this is because most people are right handed. Well, yes, but that would not make any difference because a canoe needs same amount of paddle propulsion on the right and on the left  , and besides many people are left handed. Placing the float on the left is in my opinion either the continuation of a very ancient tradition, or the result of some  religious beliefs. But it is certainly not an  adaptation to some sailing technics, otherwise the ama would not always be on the left side.

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