Bug from Heritage Salvage in Petaluma takes a break from his nation-wide mission of recycling in America’s small towns to visit two NorCal coastal residents.
“Published on Jun 26, 2012
This time Bug talks Coast Miwoks with George Snyder and then bops on down the coast to talk Alternative Building with…Lloyd Kahn!”
On Sunday I took my little (12′) aluminum boat (15 hp 2-stroke Evinrude) up to Tomales Bay to go clamming. A couple of near disasters: Backing up with a trailer has always been a problem for me; you have to turn the truck in an opposite direction from from your instincts to angle the trailer correctly. So after much travail and embarrassment (all the other boat launchers did it perfectly), I got my boat trailer down the ramp and boat in water. After parking returned to find 6″ of water in the boat. Forgot to put drain plug in. Estúpido numero dos. Bailed it out, headed for clam beds. The bay is beautiful, sandy beaches reachable only via water.
Sign made of license plates on Grandi Building in Pt. Reyes Station
This was my first foray with my clam gun, and I ended up getting 7 horse necks and one Washington. The gun is a piece of 4″ PVC pipe with a handle and plunger that pumps mud out and gets you down to the clam without doing a lot of shoveling. This week I’m gonna practice backing up trailer in a parking lot. I’m upping my intake of food from the sea (including seaweed) these days.
Left: nifty door latch of plumbing parts in Fertile Grounds coffee shop this morning in Berkeley
This was at the bottom of an order for our book Shelter last week:
“I came across an original copy of this book in the early 90’s teaching art students at college, at an old heads house in North London. She let me make a photocopy of it and I would use it to demonstrate how age-old construction technologies are transcendent and empowering. I lost the copy before emigrating to the US and for the life of me couldn’t remember the title, in spite of continually using it as a reference point! So imagine my delight when 20 years later I rediscovered that it’s still in print and now I can recommend it to EVERYONE!
Man – Humble apologies for making a copy all those years ago. As I cannot begin to express my gratitude, and the influence it bore, for this WONDERFUL piece of art. You captured the spirit of an age still yet to be realized, and that’s a continuous source of inspiration!
Blessings on your house.
Glen”
(These should actually be called “redstones.”)
This must be the most soulful architecture book Rizzoli has ever published. (Full disclosure: The big timber house called “Hill of the Hawk” (pictured here) that I worked on in the ’60s in Big Sur is one of the houses; also the very simple used-material house I built for my family in the same time period.) Richard Olsen has put together a book of real homes, built by architects and non-architects, that is rich in colors and wood and creativity. Check it out in an independent bookstore.
Lew just sent me this link: https://huff.to/JzSIbC
Recently someone told me about these 2 books and I got both of them used. How to Build Your Home in the Woods by Bradford Angier (1952) is on building a log cabin (and rustic furniture and details like door latches etc.). The Sunset Cabin Plan Book is a gem from 1938, with drawings and floor plans for very small homes. It’s like the predecessor of Lester Walker’s (also excellent) Tiny Houses. Check out Amazon and also Abebooks (which is often cheaper than Amazon on used books).
Making Shelter Simple: An Interview with Lloyd Kahn By Avi Solomon at 1:07 pm Tuesday, May 15.
It’s a pretty long interview, along with an audio track. It’s nice when a journalist gets it right. Here’s the beginning:
Avi Solomon: What do you see in your childhood that pointed you onto the path that your life took?
Lloyd Kahn: When I was a kid I had a little workbench with holes in it, and the holes were square or round or triangular. And you had to pick the right little piece of wood block and hammer it in with a little wooden hammer. And so I’d hammer with it, put the round dowel into the round hole, and hammer it through. And then maybe the most formative thing was when I was twelve – I helped my dad build a house. It had a concrete slab floor, and concrete block walls. And my job was shoveling sand and gravel and cement into the concrete mixer for quite a while. We’d go up there and work on weekends. One day we got the walls all finished, and we were putting a roof on the carport, and I got to go up on the roof. They gave me a canvas carpenter’s belt, a hammer and nails, and I got to nail down the sheathing. And I still remember that, kneeling on the roof nailing, the smell of wood on a sunny day. And then I worked as a carpenter when I was in college, on the docks. I just always loved doing stuff with my hands.…”
Click here for the whole interview: https://boingboing.net/2012/05/15/making-shelter-simple-an-inte.html
This was by the side of the road on Hwy. 61. It’s a good visual example for a novice builder of the framing of the simplest of stud-frame buildings: the shed roof. Looks like 2×4 studs, 2×6 rafters. Also looks like the builder is part-way through blocking the rafters.
I’m in Duluth in a hotel room at the Fitger (150-year-old) Brewery/Inn, looking out at the foggy (and cold) waters of Lake Superior, getting ready to head back home this afternoon. I’m looking through the hundreds of photos I’ve shot in this somewhat remote corner of the USA. What to do with all this “content?”
It turns out to be a wonderful place. I don’t know how they manage so many classes. Craftsmanship everywhere is high quality. Boat building, timber framing, weaving, basket making, blacksmithing. I’m about to take off in a canoe with Peter, the timber framer, in the Boundary Waters, so I’ll throw a few photos out here and post details later. The building is their blacksmith training shop, which contains 4 forges.
I’m doing my “The Half Acre Homestead” tomorrow (Friday) and Tiny Homes presentation Saturday.
