Timber!
This is the view from inside the Nutmeg’s wheelhouse. Well, about a quarter of it actually—the vista towards three out of four points of the compass is completely uninterrupted.
I’d like to tell you about the timber we used. Most of it is reclaimed from one place or another. It’s very hard to source good quality marine hardwoods these days. You can get very expensive new teak and mahogany, but its color is not a rich as the older timber, and most of it comes from dodgy countries like Burma where the military junta is systematically denuding the forests. The small islands in the Indian Ocean from which the best mahogany comes, have long since been stripped to bare rocks. So I had quite an adventure scouring eBay (and the English countryside) to find the good stuff. Here’s a breakdown:
–The panelling of the new wheelhouse is made from the mahogany doors to lockers in a boys’ boarding school that closed down.
–The main worktop is a mahogany counter that came from a science laboratory. It has numbers along the rim, presumably to mark out different experiments?
–The upright beams once made up the bannisters to a staircase in a grand hotel.
–The trim is of a beautiful wood called jarrah. I came by a quantity of this with help from a Forum regular named Bawdsey Buoy. He and I went exploring down a former RAF cold war control bunker one night, and found a pile of old floorboards made of the stuff, that was due to be dumped in a skip! We asked the owners if they would donate it to my lifeboat, and happily they agreed. Jarrah comes from the North West of Australia. It’s a relative of teak but more brittle. Apparently, convict ships used to fill up with it for the trip back to England; and in the days before paved roads, market towns used to line their streets and town squares with it to keep the merchants’ carts out of the mud. Over the years a lot of it ended up being used as floorboards in mines too. When we found it, it was dull greeny grey. But after machine-planing it, then many coats of varnish, it came up a fantastic deep reddy brown color, with a lovely grain to it.
There’s some new sapele and pine tongue+groove in there as well, but about 80% of the wheelhouse is reclaimed wood. The previous wheelhouse was much smaller—where the inner edge of the worktops is, that was the perimiter of the old wheelhouse, with a walkable deck running round the outside.
I’ll write more about my carpenters and the boatbuilding process, as well as my equipment and wiring choices—the latter being a work in progress, as I have yet to decide exactly what I want in the studio!
It’s looking good Thomas. It’s great to see you’ve got some reclaimed good old Australian timber there. Now we just have to get you out here at some point to see where it’s grown. But for now, enjoy being surrounded bit a little piece of Australia while you create.
Wow, that is quite some wheelhouse. The wood looks great. Funny that your main worktop comes from a science laboratory. The view from those huge windows must be inspiring.
Love the paintwork and the main door looks like an incredible piece of engineering, almost like a drawbridge.
Your carpenters must be understanding dedicated guys to undertake your ideas and turning them into a beautiful reality.
The Lifeboat has taken on a look which is very unique. It is real and yet it has a sort of steampunkish, Victoriana, H.G. Wells ‘Nautilus’ kind of feel about it.
‘Nutmeg of Consolation’ is a great name for your vessel. Warm and comforting, perfect in this current weather!
Is the name a bearing on what the possible name for the new album will be?
Looking forward to the next blog entry and possible podcasts.
Just gorgeous, and what great history to the boat and all of her parts, too! What a fantastic place to work. Congratulations on all that has been done so far. Looking forward to more stories of restoration and the studio build.
What a beautiful visual mix of old wood and new technology! And the inspiring view! I think it would be impossible to NOT be inspired to write interesting music in there.
Reminds me of an artist colony residency I did in Wyoming’s Big Horn Mountains, with a view of their foothills just out my studio window. Gets the ideas rolling…
Gorgeous!
You talk about seeing the potential in things…
Thomas, you see not only the way things are, but the way they
could be. And then you frequently Make It So.
I love this quote: “A visionary is a dreamer with a work ethic”.
Author unknown by me, but it captures the way I am inspired
when brilliant people such as yourself formulate these huge,
complicated ideas in your heads, then make them real.
Oh, your Lifeboat is so elegant now…such a labor of love, and
you’ve made recycling into a fine art.
Peace, admiration and inspiration,
Kara
Is that a periscope? Brilliant!
The woodwork is beautiful.
You once said that you know a song is right when you get it going and start dancing around to it in your studio. Are curtains in the future to shield outside witness to such antics?
I am really interested in your electrical efficiency. Are you 100% nature powered yet?
I love the look of the room, and I couldn’t help but notice what I believe to be Orb Audio speakers on the counter… made in the U.S.A., they’d be a great choice if that’s indeed what they are. I have the same config (although I didn’t spring for the brushed stainless look), and I also wonder if TMDR went for the subwoofer, and if so, where he put it!
The hand antiqued copper Orbs look pretty:
http://www.orbaudio.com/index.asp?PageAction=Custom&ID=62
It’s so beautiful! And I love how most of the wood was salvaged instead of just cutting all new wood. Major kudos for that
I can just imagine the veiw out of the window once it’s out on the water.
Ah reclaimed wood. I love building out of reclaimed wood. I’m currently sitting at a desk I made out of 100 year old red fir planks. It’s got such a lovely patina to it.
Man, your renovation project is certainly moving much faster than mine. Time for me to call in some favours from Mike Holmes.