I have known Harold Burnham since he was a little shaver trying to see how deep he could bury the rails of his family's Friendship Sloop before his mother told him to head up. He was always a chip off his old man's block.

Harold is now a shipbuilder and TWO chips off his old man's block. That's him on the left laying off timber for the schooner Thomas E. Lannon back in the spring of 1997.

That's me above from a Boston Globe feature on the Lannon. I spent the month of June building the Lannon's wheelbox shown here. I designed it to replicate the shape and style of an old traditional Essex wheelbox. Her construction is modern however– laminated plywood and 2 inch Mahogany using the West System.
Here's the Lannon at low tide the morning after her late-night launch. At high tide, she was towed down the Essex River and over to Gloucester to be rigged.
Contributing to the construction of a traditional sawn frame vessel was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

I would not, however, recommend that anyone elect wheelbox construction as a new career path.

So until the next wheelbox contract...I must experiment with HTML, design, art, photography.......

I have assembled a selection of images into a slide show. Although some look like paintings, they are actually purposefully manipulated photographs. If I could paint, this is what my work would look like.