Of Ice and Wood

On the ice........

I guess the lads on my league team had a bit of a bad outing a couple of weeks ago - so I was tapped to play last week and this week in the pipes. This makes me goalie # 3 so far this year (I usually play forward in this league) - needless to say, I was a bit nervous.......and so was the rest of the team after the first five minutes and a 0-3 deficit. But we did win that one 5-3 and this last week was a much improved 5-1 win.

Try as I might, I have a terrible time with my glove hand - my stick side is great, and maybe that's whats keeping me looking good, most goalies have a harder time on that side, so that's where most of the shots are. I got the glove on ebay, but the manual never came with it.

The regular goalie has a severe ankle sprain and thinks he might be back after hunting season. But I was talking to my buddy at work who has played nets since he was 6 and he told me he had to take almost a full season to recover from a similar injury (it's the stance and the push-off that can be painful during play, you may not even feel it from day to day).

It's still a blast - all the guys know each other and I was filling in for a goalie on a Sunday night pickup game. That was 4 on 4 with some of the better players from my league - I was soaked by the end of the night.


In the shop....

I finished re-cutting the a couple of the forms that had been damaged through previous builds. I might still have to shave down the edges a bit, but nothing major. Tomorrow, I'll be setting up the strongback and setting in the forms. This provides a skeleton to build the canoe on.

My wood is on order now from my canoe place -and I should be into actual construction by the first week of Nov. The big deal this week was forming the stems for the canoe.

Stems are laminated strips of wood at the two ends of the canoe. I had spent a few hours cutting and planing down some strips of walnut for this. Al Witham (who is essentially teaching me how to do this) finished off the cedar and ash strips during last week.

After steaming the stems for about an hour (just bundle the wood together, set it in a long tube overtop a kettle and plug both ends with rags) Al told me that in theory we have about 45 seconds to get these pieces bent and clamped onto the form......but in reality it was probably closer to 15 sec. A weeks work dependent on 15 sec.....boy I love carpentry!.

Everything went well and even Al and my friend Ez were suprised, because no one who made canoes with them had ever tried to bend walnut before (I found this out afterwards).

Some fun

Ok - no posts since August. Yeah, things are going that well. Work seems to be sapping the life out of me.

So - as far as fun updates from Iain....

Tuesday night hockey (The Rusty Blades) has started and we are all floating around having fun. One chap was caught backchecking, at least that's what we believe the term is - he was sternly reprimanded...well maybe mocked ad nauseum in the dressing room is a better way to phrase it.

It's always a good skate - even though I was playing nets last week and was helping the lads pad their stats.

Thursday night hockey is on, as well. Gentlemen's league. A little more competetive - at least the off season conditioning helped a bit. Still a good time - I leave the Industrial Hockey to the the twentysomethings who are still trying to make the NHL.

I have tweaked my PC a bit - finding a new graphics card and a new power supply. Well, new to me. Purchased via ebay - they are running well. Can't really tweak it any further, but I do enjoy tinkering with PCs. Though I don't think I could do it for a living. Our IT Department (one guy) is a now a self-confessed ludite who has nothing to do with computers outside of work.

So, coming up for the winter: APICs night school, cedar strip canoe project and music lessons on the guitar if I can find the time.