Another inspiration is my uncle, Russ Liechty, who was born in 1930, and grew up on a farm near Pettisville, Ohio. Being the last in a family of nine children, he felt no particular need for higher education because his Dad did quite well with only a sixth grade education.

His dad (my grandpa) Joseph Christian Liechty, was an entrepreneur who had several dealerships, selling Maytag products, Chrysler automobiles, John Deere tractors and a farm to complete the mix. He provided plenty of machines to take apart around the farm. Below is my Grandpa, Grandma Emma, my Mom and Dad, Uncle Wayne, cousins Shirlyn and Ellen with my sister Anne between them, and me in front of Grandpa.

One by one, the brothers began taking over the family businesses. Russ did a little of everything, from mechanics to farming, and anticipated joining the car business after school. After high school, he drove a truck for a year until his sister Doris (my mother), who was at Goshen College, persuaded him to give college a try. Russ agreed to go for one semester, and got hopelessly “hooked.”

There he thrived and found a stimulating opportunity in education. This lead eventually to a PHD in Psychology and a career in college Administration and Student Development. For this reason, the guys at the factory in front of his shop call him “Doc” Liechty. The photo below shows Uncle Russ and Aunt Marge in the early days.

The photo below shows my Grandma Emma Liechty and all of her children: Aunts Lorraine, Mary, and my mother Doris, Uncles Don, Wes, Herman, Wayne, Harold and Russel, along with Don’s wife Lois, Carly June and one unknown to me.

Uncle Russ’s mechanical roots were tangled deep though, and he never lost the childhood interest in cars and trucks. I would put my money on him to be able to identify any year of Chrysler car or Dodge truck for the last century. (Added note: he reviewed this post for dates and details and did not refute this claim!)

A few years back, he bought a 1947 Dodge 2 1/2 ton semi-tractor in rather rough condition for $600. This began a five year full restoration that required complete disassembly down to the bare frame. Every part was cleaned, repaired, or rebuilt as necessary before reassembly began. The major components, i.e. engine, transmission, starter, generator, etc were all rebuilt by experienced professionals. It now has six new tires, all new glass, interior mats, door panels, headliner and seat upholstery. Uncle Russ did the body repair work, but the final painting was done by a professional.

This led to being featured in a major truck magazine. This is a really big truck for a man with a really big vision. It has an air horn to match.

The Big Red truck is now estimated to be worth around $25,000 and is a parade and show favorite. Uncle Russ also restored a 1919 Dodge touring car, a 1949 Chrysler Windsor, a 1962 Chrysler Newport, a 1964 Dodge Dart convertible, 1964 Rambler American convertible and a 1936 Dodge 1/2 ton pickup shown below.

Actually, this truck might be the best of all of the featured choices to pull the boat, should it ever get done. Currently, I am working on putting the mahogany veneer on the sides. This step required some special clamps to help hold the pieces in place as I was shaping them down to size. They have an inner concentric surface which tightens up as I turn them. The outer piece is just to hold the large floppy pieces in place during shaping.

Here is the preparation for the second piece.

Jeff Margush helped provide a full size pattern that helped create a good line down the side for the bottom of the veneer.

And finally, Jeff and I epoxy the pieces in place, essentially completing the last of the major wood parts added to the hull. This is a huge milestone to pass, and the hope of getting in the water this summer.

Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.

Napoleon Hill

At my pace, a few cutting boards or a mirror frame can usually be finished in a week. A queen size bed takes more like a couple of months and a dresser could stretch into most of the winter. So, having a goal of building a 20-foot speed boat in a year did not turn out to be realistic.

After all, the cherry and curly maple stair railing took a little over a year. One reason was that a friend gave me a nice piece of ebony wood, and Jan said that having a little black accent in the newell post would help it relate to the black piano. Of course, this added time to the process but now I can’t imagine it any other way.

The top ebony trim is actually a mitered frame, with the corners reinforced by a 45 degree saw-curf insert.

The stairway also took two 45 degree turns, which created several complications. Since I had strengthened all of the lower 90 degree riser corners with a dovetail joint, I decided to do a dovetail joint here as well. That involved a special holding jig, and much trial and error to get it right. Also, where the bottom molding meets the corner, it did not cleanly join the other wall piece and need a special transition piece to be made.

In the same way, the boat has brought challenges that took longer, and added complexity, but become valued parts of the final product. When I showed my designer friend Jeff the gauges for the dash, he noted that the square ignition switch plate did not fit with the round shapes of the other pieces.

I agreed, so I found a bolt, some washers and nuts to hold the switch plate, and mounted it in the drill. By spinning it against the sander, eventually the square corners gave way to a round plate.

Unfortunately, the screw holes for attaching it to the dash were also cut off, so I needed to make a wood washer to hold it tightly for mounting. Some time later, this is the result:

The navigation light mounting flange is made to hold the light tube perpendicular to the mounting surface. However, where the light goes on the back right panel would not be true vertical. So, this suggested that I make another custom flange, so it can be rotated for the light to be straight up.

The outline of the cockpit had the earlier problem of looking too square. I started by adding the corner round, and then made a top corner piece to join the perimeter moldings. The problem was that the piece needed to make a curve and a twist to connect the dash to the side. When you count the number of failed attempts, you can imagine this was not the fastest way to go either.

The second corner went better than the first, and led to another molding across the top of the dash. This was complicated by the fact that I did not want to put screw holes through it to attach it to the dash. Being curved did not help anything. Below is shown the clamps and special hold-downs to get it glued.

Next came the side moldings, where the deck top did not have the final veneer surface. So I added temporary screw blocks to clamp the molding in place. Spring clamps are not as strong as screw clamps, but if you have enough of them, they work pretty well. The blue tape on the blocks is intended to prevent glue squeeze-out from attaching the blocks to the hull.

Then it was time to add the veneer to the raised part of the deck. I started with 1/4″ cheap plywood patterns to give the best yield and grain direction on the mahogany.

These pieces had outside and inside contours that needed to have perfect curves. The outside was left rough with some overlap to shape later. The inner curves had to be pre-shaped to beautiful lines with my favorite hand tool, the block plane. By setting the blade a bit aggressive, and turning the body of the plane diagonal, it is possible to achieve smooth inner curves that are superior to band sawing and sanding.

Below is the step of rough fitting the top veneer cover pieces, and then clamping and screwing them in place. I attempted to have as few screws as possible, but some filling and plugging will be needed later.

Then, the center bridge needed the corresponding veneer pieces to tie it together.

And so, time marches onward. I have generally thought that I am never lost if I am not out of time. The problem arising is that my Dad’s big 90th birthday party reunion is occurring at Little Eden camp in five months, and the boat must be there. This doesn’t leave room for many more detours.

Fortunately, all I have left is the curly maple top veneer, the mahogany transom veneer, side veneer, fairing and hand shaping all of the final contours, paint and varnish, installing the fuel cap, navigation lights, tie bars, running the wires for the gauges and rigging, making a cradle to hold the boat on its side, a windshield and a trailer…

“Time sometimes flies like a bird, sometimes crawls like a snail, but a man is happiest when he does not even notice whether it passes swiftly or slowly.”

Ivan Turgenev

As long as I can remember, I have been intrigued by adventure. This curiosity emerged pretty young, as do many traits of personality. We lived in Indianapolis, and when I arrived, there was already a big sister Anne. By the way, I need to give a huge credit to my Dad for taking and saving all of our old family pictures.

Below is a photo of us sitting beside the small picket fence and roses in the front yard, with our cousin Danny Swartzendruber. He might have been giving us a big idea.

One day, sister Anne and I decided to go out and see the world. Considering that we went together, I have to imagine that any sibling rivalry was temporarily calm. It is also unlikely we were at odds with our parents. If we were, we were too inexperienced at running away, to pack even the most basic provisions of food and water. Apart from a skinned knee, we were generally contented and amiable children.

Our house was at 3712 21st Street, about a mile from the Indianapolis Speedway, in the Eagledale neighborhood. It was a warm summer day, and for whatever reason, we headed east two blocks to Kessler Boulevard, on our tricycles. There we turned south toward the city, pedaling slowly and taking in the sights of the city.

Maybe it was the quiet at home, or just a mother’s intuition that alerted Mom to the fact that two kids has just flown the coop. I was beginning to wonder if I could find my way home, when she found us a few blocks down the boulevard. I can’t remember if she was more angry or relieved, but the result was the same when Dad came home. Below is the little house in the city that we called home while Dad was in orthodontic training at IU Dental School.

A few years later, we were visiting Uncle Wayne and Aunt Loveda Liechty’s house a couple of miles east of Archbold, Ohio. They had a tractor to pull a wagon, which was the main attraction. In the wagon are my four sisters, Anne, Margaret, Jane and Mary.

But we were offered some pop, which was a rare opportunity growing up in my Dad’s dental home, where we did not get daily snacks or sweets. Birthdays were an exception, and the photo below shows Mom’s special bunny cake for Margaret’s birthday, at about the age of our journey.

The fact that we had to walk 2 1/2 miles to the A&W Root Beer Stand, in Archbold, did not deter us. Aunt Loveda gave my sister a dime since she was in school and old enough to drink root beer. I got a nickel because I wasn’t in school and only drank orange pop. Then she gave us detailed instructions to go straight west, until the road came to a T and then turn left.

This seemed simple enough, until the the minutes dragged on and still only cornfields could be seen. The day was so hot that the asphalt on the gravel road had those sticky bubbles, and if you looked ahead you could see the hot shimmering mirage. We had to walk on the grass.

After what seemed like hours, we came to a cross road, and debated if this was the big turn. This was a moment of wondering if we were ever going to get there. Since there were no buildings, we kept going straight.

Finally, we dragged ourselves into Archbold, turned left at the T, and in a couple of blocks, and arrived at the A&W Root Beer Stand. Here we found our reward which was doubly good in proportion to the effort required to achieve it. Apparently, those were days when two bedraggled kids in town by themselves did not stand out, as no one asked who our parents were. Also, no one seemed to be concerned about our safety in the midwest farm community, as we took our afternoon journey.

Below is the crew of Mom, Anne, Margaret, Jane, and Mary, with Grandma Emma Liechty on Brussels Street in Archbold.

The boat is kind of like that, with wondering if we are on the right track, and sometimes the simplest task seems to have no end. Occasionally, it spanks you with dead ends and disappointments. Below is a jig I spent some hours on, to custom cut cove moulding parts, only to find the parts did not fit the proportion and angles of the corners. By the way, the blade must start very low and be moved up in repeated small increments to get a cut this big.

After a few detours and slow motion days, I finally concluded that the inside of the boat is finished enough to move forward. The picture below shows gauges installed in the dash, slots made for the steering hydraulic lines, wood supports for the shelves that conceal the wire harness under them, and a blue conduit for the wires of the navigation lights.

So, the current step is to make the outer deck planks and begin to close in the top. I had two 14-foot pieces of mahogany, 14-20″ wide, that came from a “garage sale” at Swartzendruber Hardwoods a few years back. It looked to be just enough to make the two side planks, in three pieces each. However, a screw-up on even one piece would make it seriously difficult to find another matching part, so I started by making patterns.

The first attempt was of construction foam, which was not nearly precise enough. Next, I bought a cheap piece of 1/4″ plywood and spent some time doing three detailed patterns for each side, so I could accurately lay them out on the mahogany boards.

Then, the patterns were oriented on the boards as well as possible to have the curve of the grain tracking with the boat profile.

One by one, I began cutting them out and fitting them to the curved boat sheer line, and notching them to fit into the cross frames.

When they were all fit, and angled to meet the next plank, I joined the parts together. At the back scarf joint, I used biscuits to help with alignment.

Next was the critical glue-up step. When clamping diagonal parts, the pieces tend to slide sideways, so I used the wood screw clamp laid horizontally to resist side movement. It anchors on two small temporary blocks, fastened to the inside edge, where the screw holes wouldn’t show later. The green masking tape is to prevent glue ooze-out where it would be difficult to sand.

The one-fifth scale model hangs around on the table for inspiration. Grandson Clayton thinks it should become a radio controlled model for future use. Here the second side is being fit to the curve and notched.

Below is the photo of the first side being epoxied in place. Since it was a curved piece with the outside angled down, clamping mainly on the outside created enough glue pressure on the inner side as well. The clamp blocks were screwed in temporarily, and the holes will be filled and covered by a mahogany veneer that goes on the outside. This way, almost no screw holes will be seen, except at the back where more torquing was done.

Here is Jeff Margush, making up for my height and heft, with his trim and limber physique, finishing the inside epoxy fillets. Now, that is the measure of a friend.

Am I done with the boat yet? No, but the light at the end of the tunnel no longer looks like an oncoming train.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bow lines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

-Mark Twain

Even though my brother Joe is nine years younger, we have been doing adventures since the beginning. In the 60’s at our house, there was no TV, and the radio’s dial was off-limits for a teenager. The inside of our house had no magnetic pull to us, and besides, with four sisters, the boys had to stick together.

Early on, we went hiking along Yellow Creek from the Concord Junior High, ranging a mile or so from home, trying to walk across on the fallen logs. We also played catch with a baseball or football in the yard, and shot hoops on the sloping driveway.

Sometimes we went plinking with our slingshots which I made from forked sticks and some rubber surgical tubing that my Uncle Ernest Smucker, a surgeon, gave me. We spent hours with friends on the rope swing over the creek, where the exhilaration often led to a wet ending.

In the winter, we ice skated on the creek, or better yet, played hockey at the junior high tennis courts, when the Dunlap Fire Department came to flood it. We iced sledding ramps on the hill beside our house, and Joe had his neighbor buddies over to play.

When I went off to Goshen College, Joe occasionally came to stay with me in my dorm. One summer, at Shavehead Lake, we decided to try barefoot skiing and eventually taught ourselves how to get going off of a knee board. Below is Joe and sister Mary going slalom.

After Joe finished college, we did stuff like biking Parke county with a bunch of the old wood covered bridges and a night ride through Denver. But on one special winter day in Colorado, we went skiing. Below is a photo of where we got started skiing as a family, with Mom and Joe at Swiss Valley.

In his 20’s, he was just coming into his prime and I was rapidly leaving mine behind, but there was enough overlap for us to head for the moguls. There was one beautiful stretch of steep snow that we went down single file a few times to get the feel of it. Then, someone had the idea to go side by side, so we took off together. We were skiing hard and staying fluid in the right/left, up/down rhythm of the mogul paths. We were in the “zone,” making a memory of a lifetime, when we heard some clapping from the chair lift beside the run. That was apparently enough to break my concentration, and I took the inevitable thing that “pride goeth before.” It is sometimes also referred to in the trade as a “yard sale.”

As Joe got older, we still did some casual adventure, but I began mostly watching his performances.

You have to know when to step aside.

As Joe got into more serious life-threatening adventures like biking and hiking in Mexico, he went with his own crazy peers like Lynford Beachy and Jeff Hershberger. Then there was the summer that Joe even built a house to sell in Miller’s River Manor behind Oxbow School. Of course, he dragged me into the project to help with the wood floor.

So it was only natural that when I needed a hole in my basement for the boat to escape, it was Joe to the rescue. Realistically, the boat won’t need the exit hole until next spring, but he was coming to Elkhart over the summer, and he volunteered his enthusiasm in the boat project. Did I mention we will have to take it out sideways like a grand piano?

The real genius was inviting Todd Smucker, a friend from their softball days at Belmont Mennonite Church. Todd had the most experience with vinyl siding, with all of the tools and tricks to get the wall cut quickly and a temporary door in place.

Fight with your brother, if you must when you are young, but stick by him when you are older, because you never know when you might need help getting out of a hole.

Recently, a new friend Troy Madlem said (my paraphrase) that he appreciated the boat process but that you had to wade through a bunch of fluff in my blog posts to get there. So here are a few little things about the boat without so much of the stories:

It all started with these balsa wood models that I made around age 13-16. At the time they were working boats, one had an air motor, and the others had sails.

The dream became more compelling in 1972 when I was in high school and my dad bought this 16′ Marlin Scorpion with green metal flake paint. It had an 85 HP Johnson motor which pushed the boat close to 45 mph and your heart rate over a hundred. This was never known for sure, as it had no tachometer, speedometer, fuel gauge, or any other gauge, but it was capable of pulling a barefoot skier.

My brother Joe and I took a few runs on Shavehead Lake in the early 80’s. We sat back on a knee board and stood up as the speed increased. I did enough to say I “footed”, but Joe got pretty good. A hard fall convinced me eventually to stick with skiing on the “Green Flash”, our O’brien slalom ski with a concave bottom that could really cut.

And so these little things led to the day I decided to make the dream a reality and build a boat of my own.

Below is the first stage of the process, a 1/5 scale model made of 3/8″ plywood, cherry and maple. The motor is thanks to Jeff Margush’s sculpting.

Then, the model took a proportional weight test in the hot tub. At 1/5 scale, 1 pound is equal to 125 pounds in real size. So the 2 lb. exercise weight in the driver’s seat represents an adult man with the seat. The miscellaneous mix at the back adds up to the 420 lb. Evinrude 135 hp motor.

Next, is a photo of the assembly of the cross frames. It shows the dowel assembly and the custom clamping that was often required for irregularly shaped parts. This may be overkill engineering, as the joints were then reinforced with plywood gussets.

Here is a photo of shaping curved parts with a self-guiding router bit. Notice the bearing at the top of the cutter. I would carve or rasp that top edge to a fair curve and then rout the rest to join it. This was a cut and repeat method until it looked right.

The strong back is the assembly that the cross frames are attached to. It is one of many operations in boat work that is eventually is removed from the boat, but is essential to get right if the boat is going to have fair lines.

Then, the longitudinal stringers and structural parts were added. This is where a multitude of spring clamps shine, being easy to place in tight spaces.

Eventually, the top stringers were added, being let in to the cross frames, sawn with a wonderful Japanese pull-stroke saw.

To help match the stringers as they came forward, I clamped on the short sticks and torqued the pieces until the angles were the same.

Here is Jeff Margush and his son Jason, installing the fiberglass fabric to be embedded in epoxy. This created much more stiffness and puncture resistance for the marine plywood core.

By themselves, each of the steps above is a little thing, but when they are done well, and in combination with many other parts, become a thing of beauty. Here is our friend and favorite musician Jon Guerra, with his wife Val, my daughter Amanda and their friend Sarah.

The title track of his recent album, Little Songs, is about offering the best of what we have as first fruits back to God, the words, the tunes, our hearts. It is an inspiring way to live.

Some unattributed author wrote, “The way you do anything is the way you do everything.”