All photographs are 
Max Vollmer. Click on any image to enlarge.
Footpath to the lighthouse.
Along the path. 1930’s era historic bridge along Highway 101.
Along the path.
Former home for the lighthouse tender.
Heceta Head lighthouse.
These two women have got it down. [Click on Full Screen icon in the lower right corner to best appreciate the video]
Harleys I Have Known and Loved
My original 2002 FLSTFI fuel injected, 88 c.i., Fat Boy, in Eugene before the accident. Fantastic full Langlitz leathers from Portland, OR, saved my skin. All photographs are Max Vollmer. Click on any photograph to enlarge.
Rebuilt after the accident with Vance & Hines Python pipes and solo saddle. A screamer! A classic ride.
My 2003 “100th Anniversary” FLHRI 88 c.i. fuel injected Road King. Custom tank and logo, custom solo seat. A smooth comfortable ride, including a ride from Seattle, WA, to Joseph, OR, in light snow.
My 2004 FXSTBI c.i. fuel injected Night Train customized with Deuce forks and Vance & Hines Long Shots. Got it up to 110 mph on a long straightaway in Wallowa County, OR.
My 2004 FXSTDSE2 CVO Screaming Eagle Deuce purchased 2nd hand with 8K miles on the odometer for $8,000. 110 c.i. Mint condition. Very fast. Very loud.
Mesmerizing! Incredible violin solo and a touch of klezmer. [Click on Full Screen icon in the lower right corner to best appreciate the video]
Hayrake Table – In the Style of Sidney Barnsley
Sidney Barnsley (b.1865-d.1926), was an important and influential Arts and Crafts designer-maker who hand crafted furniture for his family and for clients. He had previously trained as an architect and worked in London before moving to the rural Cotswolds region of England, Pinbury Park and Sapperton in Gloucestershire.
In early 2019, I decided to build an oak dinner table for myself with a leg set that incorporated a “hay rake” or “heel rake” stretcher, a feature that Barnsley had adapted for one of his tables from a traditional wooden rake used by farmers to rake hay in their fields into windrows. Below is a photo of one of these 18th~19th century rakes showing the joinery used to create the handle. It is a marvel of traditional, rural woodworking that is very strong but lightweight . . . a perfect example of form following function. [Click on any image to enlarge.]
Barnsley used the essentials of the rake joinery to create the stretcher (see below) for his table, circa 1900. All three b&w photos are taken from Gimson and the Barnsleys by Mary Comino (Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1980).
With no original drawings to go by, I made my own full size, scaled plans and set to work on the “Y” shaped joint only to find that my first effort was not going to be satisfactory. It ended up going in my wood stove. I revised the plans based on my experience and started over. [Click on any image to enlarge. All following photos Max Vollmer]
For aesthetic reasons I reduced the acute angle between the arms of the “Y” and the main, longitudinal stretcher from 45 degrees to 40 degrees. I used overlapping tenons on the arms where they intersect and join the main stretcher.
And, based on my first failed effort, I also redesigned the tenons on the “spanner” or brace that connects the two arms of the “Y.” This allowed me to cut “through” mortises in the arms that were perpendicular to the axis of the arms rather than mortises cut at a 40 degree angle. This way I could use straight tenons on the spanner. Not only was this redesign equally strong, it was much easier to cut the mortises. The following series of photos illustrate my approach. [Click on any image to enlarge, All photos Max Vollmer]
In the next stage, I used a felt tip pen to outline the reduced size of the arms with their curved detailing where the arms meet the long, center stretcher and then used the bandsaw to rough out the shapes. Following that I used an assortment of rasps, files, planes and sandpaper to refine the curved details. The following sequence takes you through the steps. This was a very time consuming process, and one that cannot be duplicated with finesse by any other means. This is what hand work is all about.
Next I dry fit the arms to the center stretcher to check my clearances. See below.
From there I consulted my full size, scaled plans for the spanner that connects the two arms and interlocks with the center stretcher. All measurements, markings, and cuts on the spanner must be extremely precise in order for all four pieces to fit together with tight joints. It is an added challenge to have all the through tenons emerge flawlessly where they are visible on the outside faces. Here is the sequence.
Assembled it looks like this.
The dry fit stretcher assembly is then marked with the location of all chamfers. The chamfers in the original hay rake do not compromise the strength of the rake, but they decrease the weight the farmer has to lift and pull for hours on end. In the table, weight is not a concern but the chamfers add immeasurably to the aesthetic appeal of the stretcher.
See below the full stretcher and leg set ready to go and then assembled. Barnsley chose to have the pegs that lock the tenons in their respective mortises visible from above. I put the pegs in from below so they do not show and therefore do not distract from the flow of the joinery.
Rounding out the table frame, I fit cross pieces to the tops of the legs and then installed two long, under-table supports that are joined to the cross pieces with dovetails. The result is a support structure that, barring fire or natural disaster, has an essentially unlimited lifespan (1,000 years?) if cared for. Here it is with finish and signed with my makers mark on a cross bar.
Here’s the table top. And, following that, the table in my house. Final dimensions are 68″ L x 38″ W x 31.5″ H. The table is compact, but the design of the hay rake stretcher and the canted legs allow for four chairs, across and end to end, and will accommodate four people comfortably for a meal.
I have the lumber to make a long, low, and narrow coffee table with the same hay rake stretcher design, to which I want to add wishbone struts under the table top for added complexity and interest, something Barnsley did in one of his tables. I just need a shop.
The Grand Gallery Pictographs – Canyonlands NP, Utah
In the late 1960’s, early 1970’s, I purchased a Sierra Club Ballantine book authored by the brothers, Renny and Terry Russell, titled On the Loose. It was comprised of their accounts and their photographs from explorations as young men in the wildlands of Utah. One picture they took and included in the book was of the “Grand Gallery” of ancient Native American pictographs in a small, separate and remote piece of Canyonlands National Park in Utah. The book captured my imagination and I had every intention of following in their footsteps. I made several road trips into the southwest before 2004 when I finally set out to find the Grand Gallery.
Departing from a paved highway in central Utah, the dirt and gravel road to the trailhead for the gallery is about 25 miles long. I made the trip in February. It was so cold the night before I set out on the day-long hike that my gallon of milk turned into an icy slush overnight. The trail to the gallery descends from the tableland into the canyon on a very rough “road” dynamited in the 1950’s by uranium prospectors down a sandstone cliff to the canyon below. The hike takes half a day to the gallery and half a day back. I had it all to myself.
The pictographs cannot be precisely dated but are estimated to be thousands of years old, made by the Archaic peoples who preceded the Anasazi and more modern Pueblo people. Here are some photos taken on the way out to the trailhead and on the day of my hike. [Click on any image to enlarge, All photos Max Vollmer]
The largest and strangest anthropomorphic figures are believed to be the work of shamans on their vision quests. The animal figures are thought to represent the game hunted by a later group of people. Fortunately, all the pictographs are now too high up on the wall to reach which gives them some protection from vandals. Erosion over the centuries has lowered the canyon floor.
Malheur County, Owyhee Canyonlands, Oregon – January 2021
I made a mid-Winter trip down to the SE corner of Oregon, in part to find some open space amid the pandemic, but also for my first glimpse of the Owyhee Canyonlands. This remote area is very sparsely populated by cattle ranchers and some sheep herders. To give you and idea, one sign I passed read, “Next gas 120 miles.” I hit a spate of dry weather which was fortunate because the desert soil turns to a slippery and sticky gumbo when wet. During the day I needed 4WD on the Leslie Gulch-Succor Creek Byway which is mud in winter. Here are a few photos. [Click on any image to enlarge, All photos Max Vollmer]
This was just before sunset at my first campsite NW of Burns Junction. Overnight low was 28 degrees F, enough to freeze the mud which made it easier to break camp in the morning.
This was my setup at Succor Creek State Park alongside the Owyhee River. Dinner that evening was Beef Stroganoff with egg noodles, sliced red pear with some cheese, and hot coffee.
Darkness fell around 5:30 p.m. and the pre-dawn light didn’t amount to much until 5:30 a.m. That makes for a long night in the sack. When I packed up and departed on my last morning along the Owyhee, it was 22 degrees F. I had hot coffee and cleared out while the mud was frozen and shallow puddles were iced over, but not before picking a bunch of sage along the river bank to perfume the truck cab.
Winter colors in the canyonlands are not much to brag about.
Muete – You & Me
Berliners on holiday. [Click on Full Screen icon in the lower right corner to best appreciate the video]
With My Own Two Hands – Ben Harper, Play for Change
[Click on the Full Screen icon in the lower right corner to best appreciate the video]
Priest’s Chair – Palace of the Governors, Santa Fe, New Mexico
I found this picture online of an 18th century chair in the collection of the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, known as the Priest’s Chair. See below.
There are a few, early, carved armchairs like this one from northern New Mexico that are referred to as Priest’s Chairs without any documented connections to churches. However, chairs of any kind were few and far between on the northern New Mexico frontier in the 1700’s and armchairs like this one would have been found only in the homes of prosperous Spanish families and in a few Catholic churches with larger congregations. The wood used in the original was the best timber available at the time, Ponderosa pine from the Sangre de Cristo mountains. I decided to make a copy of this chair, with added details, to accompany my carved New Mexico bench (October 2015 Archive) and my carved Harinero chest (January 2018 Archive). This was the last project I completed before dismantling my shop in January 2020.
Without plans or the actual chair to go by, I based my chair dimensions on the research I did for the New Mexico bench and the old photograph. I prepared scaled drawings and then followed my usual practice of cutting and shaping all the individual pieces for the chair, including in this case, the “through” mortise and tenon joinery used on the original (“through” referring to the fact that mortises pass all the way through the wood so that the tenon ends are exposed). See below. [Click on any image to enlarge, All photos Max Vollmer]
I then tried to estimate the original dimensions of the back splats and those in front, below the seat; drew them on paper, glued the paper down to boards, and rough cut out the shapes on the bandsaw leaving enough wood top and bottom for tenons to go into the chair rails front and back.
The front and back sub-assemblies for the chair, with carved details, looked like this.
I assembled the main chair components, leaving the armrests off at first so that I would be able to accurately locate them on the back legs of the chair.
Locating the armrests was a little tricky. I wanted them level with the ground and at a height that would be comfortable for someone seated in the chair. I clamped the unfinished armrests to the front and back legs, marked their position, and then marked out the mortises in the back legs.
The location of mortises and tenons were marked on the armrests and the chair legs, cut as marked, and then all that remained was to attach them.
I sealed the pine with Minwax Natural and then made a blend of Minwax tinted sealers to darken the wood. Finally, I attached a temporary plywood seat that will be upholstered when I get the chance.
