Great wall of Yarrow

When we first moved onto our property, about thirteen years ago, one of the first things I did was lay the footings and foundations for the retaining walls and fences around our property. The fence on top had to wait until a few other things were complete. This included the new shop, house and landscaping. Now at last it is time for the fence. 

We decided a 'wood' fence was the way to go. Only our 'wood' fence is hand sculpted concrete over a sturdy welded steel frame. The fence is a little over six feet tall on the neighbour's side and just over four feet tall on ours as we built up our property quite a bit in this area. This fence will never rot out or blow over! The frame was built last fall during a slow period between projects. Now we have a bit of a gap once more and it is a great time to practice our new found wood carving style. We began with the neighbour's side of course. This portion if the fence will provide plenty of wood carving practice time for it measures a little more than two hundred feet long! We are making great time and are already more than two thirds done.

Early study model

Since I first began in the theme park business almost thirty years ago I've loved building study models. These small scale pieces are a chance to work out details and construction methods. It would prove much costlier to and time consuming to figure things out when we build the real thing. Models also allow our clients to clearly visualize the project when we are done. I have one of my earliest models on display in the studio. It's fashioned from some scrap redwood I had laying around the workshop. I made the model in a few hours with a brand new lathe, table saw and band saw I was itching to give a spin.

Anytime I talk about the model (or my favourite lathe) Peter gets all fired up, suddenly extremely eager to tell a story he remembers about the lathe... but I don't go there for I have proof the lathe worked just fine... even after I slightly modified it to suit my specific needs. If you want to hear Peter's story you'll have to ask him... but beware for he tells a version that I know is somewhat biased and greatly exaggerated.

Roll out the BARRELS!

We want to design and build the pub area of NEB's in a memorable fashion. I've already shown the distinctive still and interior mezzanine in a previous post. We have yet to design the bar area, pending the final layout of the pub but you can count on it being quite unlike any other seen before. There was one wall left which needed attention. We decided we needed to reinforce the scale of the place in the same fashion and style of the rest of the attraction. The challenge was that we couldn't use an abundance of available space away from the wall. After tossing around a few ideas we settled on some very large barrels lined up in a row - with the new NEBs logo carved into the tops of course.