the truth that should be

new blog address

2011-09-03T13:35:00.000-04:00

Hello. I have relocated my blog to tumblr. Stop on by!

http://gregoryreynolds.tumblr.com/

slowing down the birds

2011-08-16T21:08:00.003-04:00

magic christians

2011-08-13T15:19:00.001-04:00

soaking in it

2011-08-09T22:19:00.002-04:00

spending time by myself

2011-08-08T21:24:00.000-04:00

celebrate good times

2011-08-07T10:50:00.001-04:00

saving all my love

2011-08-04T20:09:00.000-04:00

the ocean between us

2011-08-03T22:57:00.001-04:00

upstanding!

2011-06-19T19:29:00.003-04:00

Many thanks to Jonathan, Rob, Jody, Robert and Kevin.

And especially Rebecca and Pablo.

fast forward

2011-06-15T23:16:00.001-04:00

last night we primed the inside of the hull and tonight we painted the inside grand banks beige and the rails sea green. they both need a second coat but it looks pretty already. install on sunday i hope.

calling in sick

2011-06-14T23:24:00.004-04:00

i want a hole here. across the east river you can see Queen's and the RFK (triboro) bridge. looking from Randall's Island. today i called in sick so i could be on site to receive a concrete delivery.

yesterday the park was kind enough to dig the hole for the base of my boat with a backhoe.

excellent although i realized today at the last minute that it was 10" too shallow. this made for some furious digging for the hour before the truck came with the concrete. 6' x 6' x 10" is a lot of dirt to fling out of a four and a half foot deep hole. in case you were wondering. 25 cubic feet or so. also, i did a lot of digging too not just pablo. pablo is the best.

the truck came early and featured a real grumpy large stogie chewing stereotype. he was none too patient but i swear the hole had 5-6000 pounds of concrete in it and he was rolling out of there in about 2 minutes. if i wasn't scared of him i would have taken his picture.

and i dunno, it doesn't seem quite right to blab about the hole and the concrete without showing said concrete. pretty fascinating i know. after this we drove all the way to jersey city and sanded the rails and sole of the boat for about an hour. we then primed the entire inside of the hull and the rails. i was in a total rush by the end of painting and didn't snap a photo though. get over it.

i will tomorrow.

the baseline

2011-06-11T11:46:00.007-04:00

well this was terrifying. yesterday 6 of us stood the boat up onto it's steel baseplate. with the steel rails attached the boat weighs about 275 lbs most of which was above our heads as the boat got more vertical. add to this the point of the bow was sliding on the steel plate we were trying to stand it on. but as it often goes, it was fine. darren was scrambling around on the second floor lassoing a cargo strap around the hull and attached it to one of the 3000 lb steel tables he has all over the place.

next, an upright steel plate was welded to the baseplate. the upright plate was also bolted through the keel. if you zoom in on this picture you can just see the bolts. as we place everything, zach was instantly welding away and the whole process took less than 45 minutes.

with the baseplate added the boat is about 650 lbs. which is kind of ridiculous.

and here it is. this is so strong it is rather unbelievable. the channel steel is welded to the baseplate, the upright and the steel rails. the tip of the bow is also welded to the base. i still feel pretty worried about it overall, but now that the baseplate is on, the boat as a whole is as strong as i can make it. really the only thing left to worry about is the installation on site. this week i will clean it all up and paint it real nice.

forces at play

2011-06-09T21:46:00.002-04:00

ok so today i finished putting the steel rails on. it was stressful (pun intended). as i mentioned before i needed to re-shape these rails so they would match the contours of the boat. we got them pretty close but not perfect, so they had to be flexed as i put in bolts. as you can imagine 2" x 3/8 steel bars become harder to bend the shorter they become which resulted in the bow cracking away from the stem right at the top. sooo...

i had one of darren's welders weld in a brace in front of the bow to stop the rails from torquing the bow apart. phew. i have to do this at the back of the boat too. for tonight the stern is being squished by a big bar clamp. nooo problem, i will just keep making it up as i go along until i am done or whatnot.

did i mention that the wood and fiberglas were nearly on fire while being welded? because they were.

the third rail

2011-06-08T22:55:00.008-04:00

three things (well actually four except i forgot to take a picture of the finished keel).

the first you can see is that i installed and sealed the sole.

the second is that i made the transom seat. to build it i made a pattern the same shape as the back of the boat. then i cut it out to match the pattern. then i epoxied and clamped together 5 mahogany planks. finally i bevelled the side edges to match the angle of the hull (which changes quite a bit from front to back)

but wait! remember the rails? well this is the third time i have installed them. tomorrow i hope they will be finished.

i now know what model railroaders experience. which is partly why i am inflicting it on you.

strongback

2011-06-05T22:10:00.002-04:00

so here are the updates from the boat sculpture project that has hijacked my blog.

yesterday pablo and i put the first coat of primer on the hull. needless to say it has changed things considerably

then today we put on the keel aka "strongback". it was a bit of an epic because we had to lay out epoxy along the hull where the keel sits and then once we placed it, it had to be bolted down before the epoxy started to set.

and to make it more interesting the guy who originally made the boat, broke the keel while making it.

so we had to fix it while attaching it. i know, right? get over it.

learning curves

2011-06-02T23:14:00.002-04:00

so today we glassed the inside of the hull. this is dennis the boatbuilding expert. he is cutting fiberglass mat around the seat rail and back of the boat. this is probably just like the boat he built for billy joel. but maybe not.

then we filleted the floor timbers. filleting uses epoxy resin reinforced with colloidal silicate. whatever that is. it is thick like icing and is put in with a curved spatula to make a small radius. then fiberglass mat is laid over that. the result is super strongness in the floor timber dept.

the last thing we did was put in the post for the transom seat. the boat is upside down and you are looking at the back. get over it. as you may notice this was filleted also. super strongness again.
this only took about 13 hours! but for the first time in 2 weeks i feel like my list of things to do got significantly shorter.

the veiling

2011-05-31T23:22:00.001-04:00

i just love the way this fabric shimmers and hugs the shoulder.
aka-fiberglassing the hull round one.

weekend update

2011-05-30T17:16:00.004-04:00

my boat needs more strength. so i am going to bolt on some steel rails.
this machine bends steel bars. they need "sheer", the vertical dip in the hull from bow to stern, and sideways curve to form the widest point at the beam to the narrowest at the bow and stern.

the result? after much fussing the steel fits the shape of the hull perfectly!

a hole every 12 inches, countersunk and threaded to hold it all in place. the bolts will be trimmed flush with the back of the rail.

but... there are some cracks in the cedar strip hull. so i have decided to fiberglas it. a guy is coming tomorrow.
this is getting out of hand.
it will be pretty amazingly strong i think once all this is done. for real. gimme strength.

the uprising

2011-05-21T20:03:00.003-04:00

looks so tall! and darren is 3 feet off the ground too.
next we will figure out the exact angle i want it to sit at and we can start the footing.
Oh, and the board with holes in it, represents the amount of the bow that will be underground.
standing on the ladder, darren is demonstrating someone standing at ground level.

night vision

2011-05-19T21:38:00.004-04:00

darren's impulse drawings during our brainstorming session.
my friends rob and pablo along with darren made for a most productive time.
thanks my dudes

rob has a few photos on his weblog too

nice to meet you

2011-05-16T22:55:00.004-04:00

you seems larger than i had figured

ain't the best for mileage but you looks pretty sweet

mind if we lookatchyer thwart?

boating

2011-05-15T23:03:00.000-04:00

i know i don't usually write about posts but today i make an exception.
this is the rowboat i bought and just picked up from shady side maryland. a 17 hour day in total which is kind of epic, but here she is. a brand new (unfinished) whitehall hull! so beautifully made and all safe and sound at darren's shop. next comes a ton of work to get it ready for installation.

angering the gods

2011-05-13T12:51:00.006-04:00

this time tomorrow

2011-05-05T20:55:00.002-04:00

now this is happening

2011-05-04T20:55:00.002-04:00

this just in. i received a sculpture commission from the Randall's Island Sports Foundation.
all i need now is a 17' rowboat. see maquette below!

creating awkward silence

2011-05-01T17:05:00.001-04:00

millions in gold

2011-04-30T21:57:00.002-04:00

infinite space

2011-04-21T19:58:00.000-04:00

idea and deed

2011-04-19T15:19:00.002-04:00

peel sessions

2011-04-17T21:51:00.002-04:00

yesterday's door, tomorrow's window

2011-04-17T14:17:00.000-04:00

the unutterable

2011-04-10T20:50:00.001-04:00

the downstairs mixup

2011-04-09T11:55:00.005-04:00

mensa

2011-04-07T19:42:00.001-04:00

our parlance

2011-03-28T20:50:00.002-04:00

i wish i had six more cars

2011-03-27T17:17:00.002-04:00

neap tide

2011-03-23T22:34:00.001-04:00

law is where you buy it

2011-03-22T20:13:00.006-04:00

guest informant

2011-03-15T21:39:00.001-04:00

ordinary fool

2011-03-10T22:43:00.000-05:00

superbole sunday

2011-02-06T16:14:00.003-05:00

substituting sex for suspense

2011-02-05T15:52:00.004-05:00

if your life were a movie

2011-01-23T22:11:00.002-05:00

look at all your different colored hats!

2011-01-17T19:45:00.001-05:00

the week in review

2011-01-02T19:35:00.000-05:00

moral compass

2010-12-29T19:36:00.000-05:00

and i need you more than want you

2010-11-23T23:23:00.001-05:00

we built another world

2010-10-26T22:43:00.001-04:00

interfering with flight

2010-10-25T07:38:00.002-04:00

mc chicken

2010-10-20T20:40:00.004-04:00

before he was experienced

2010-10-17T19:41:00.000-04:00

what comes around is all around

2010-10-14T21:11:00.001-04:00

a head full of his dreams

2010-10-13T19:28:00.001-04:00

haunted by doubts

2010-10-12T22:31:00.001-04:00

it's a celebration!

2010-10-06T20:03:00.002-04:00

how not to fight colds

2010-10-05T11:10:00.002-04:00

letters to answer, and logs to split

2010-10-03T13:08:00.000-04:00

french graffiti

2010-09-27T19:34:00.003-04:00

le p'tit orage du nord

2010-09-25T21:54:00.001-04:00

chalet à louer

2010-09-25T18:43:00.002-04:00

and so this was actually the first print i made in quebec.
man, the countryside. everyone was so nice and the air and quiet were just marvelous.
i feel a bit burnt out.

in french i own a small vocabulary

2010-09-25T18:40:00.001-04:00

weird that i didn't post these in order. this is the last etching i made during my residency in val david, quebec.

si les souhaits étaient des chevaux

2010-09-25T18:31:00.001-04:00

this is an update from the previous version posted below
a little more wave, a little less hair. you know, the usual.

outdoor life

2010-09-21T23:58:00.002-04:00

like my work at home in new york, these are 9x12 etchings using a variety of techniques.

la vie exterieur

2010-09-21T23:32:00.003-04:00

the first overdue dispatch from my residency in québec.
i spent the first week adjusting to the new studio and whining about a needed root canal.
and though i feel i need another week now that i am on a roll, week two has been very productive.

there's a storm under my feet

2010-09-02T18:55:00.003-04:00

dirty deeds thunderchief

2010-08-22T17:09:00.005-04:00

its an etching and soap ground etching

and here is a detail

Step 1: Post Proof. Step 2: Watch Fireworks.

2010-08-17T21:06:00.004-04:00

voyeur with a ticket

2010-08-15T17:22:00.003-04:00

inscrutable!

2010-08-10T20:43:00.001-04:00

half opened

2010-08-05T22:28:00.000-04:00

not the desired effect

2010-07-21T21:51:00.001-04:00

proof of relationship

2010-07-19T21:56:00.000-04:00

the dream's on me

2010-07-15T22:32:00.001-04:00

if wishes were horses

2010-07-06T21:54:00.003-04:00

still haven't heard if these necessary items have been acquired

have i told you lately that i love you

2010-07-04T11:36:00.001-04:00

hot snow

2010-07-03T16:59:00.002-04:00

havin' a time

2010-07-01T22:51:00.003-04:00

the look to adopt when you find a one million dollar bill

2010-06-27T20:12:00.001-04:00

neighbours

2010-06-26T13:36:00.001-04:00

back to the future

2010-06-24T22:23:00.003-04:00

my little pony

2010-06-24T07:23:00.001-04:00

you don't have to go in there alone!

2010-06-22T07:16:00.002-04:00

collaboration between me and rob. i think richard tuttle was there too.

affordable boutique hotel

2010-06-20T22:33:00.001-04:00

following in the footsteps of homer

2010-06-18T07:37:00.001-04:00

chokin a white man

2010-06-15T19:10:00.002-04:00

new addition at the studio!

2010-06-15T07:32:00.002-04:00

i ordered one of these beauties, and received 11.
I AM SPARTACUS!

pinkerton's men

2010-06-14T21:55:00.001-04:00

muscle building miracle discovered

2010-06-07T21:21:00.002-04:00

chuck norris, no one ever dared his motives

2010-06-03T21:37:00.001-04:00

when people meet online

2010-05-30T10:41:00.001-04:00

the bartender of your dreams

2010-05-27T20:09:00.001-04:00

when fear turns to doubt

2010-05-25T21:58:00.002-04:00

re-novated

2010-05-23T13:39:00.005-04:00

"you make a better door than a window" woodburning and paint.
ready for my favorite hardware store

second thoughts on three strikes

2010-05-22T10:48:00.001-04:00

the fate of every paper tablecloth

2010-05-20T07:26:00.002-04:00

featuring rebecca chris and claudine

foreign policy

2010-05-18T20:54:00.000-04:00

recycling day

2010-05-09T09:52:00.003-04:00

recycled from this and this

i've had a second change done at the shop

2010-05-07T07:29:00.001-04:00

half closed

2010-05-05T22:23:00.001-04:00

their name here

2010-05-01T19:32:00.001-04:00