When I was in high school, my aunt and uncle asked me to build them an addition to their dock at Indian Lake. I built them two six-by-eight-foot sections from pressure-treated lumber. I used marine foam to float the sections.

Indian Lake Dock

In order to reduce the stress on the original dock, I created a large hinge using a threaded rod doubled-nutted at each end, with multiple eye-hooks bolted into each dock.

Dock Hinge Joint

Adirondack Chair

One of my many mini-business ventures in high school was building and selling Adirondack Chairs. Each chair cost about $30 for all the wood and materials plus about 2.5 hours to build. I figured I could easily sell them for at least $120 a piece. What I didn’t realize was how much I actually liked the Adirondack chairs. I liked them so much that I decided to keep them all and give them as honorary gifts to my closest friends. Over the years the chairs became a tradition outside my garage and new friends would come and build their own. In the end I never sold a single chair but I gained many priceless memories.

Adirondack Chairs

Kiteboarding Closet

My father and I love kiteboarding but it’s a sport that requires a lot of bulky gear and it’s important to keep all the kites, lines, and harnesses clean and organized. For my father’s birthday, I decided to build him a custom closet for all of his gear. On the outside of the closet I built a storage rack for the boards.

Closet: Side-view

Closet: Front-view

Inside the closet I installed a handful of pegs for the kites and kite bars. I also installed a rack to hang all the harnesses and suspended a metal bar for hanging the wetsuits.

Wooden Rowboat

For Christmas one year my cousin, Reuben, bought me blueprints for a small wooden boat. We adjusted the plans to make the length of the boat 8 feet so that it could easily fit in a truck bed. What I love most about this boat is that every piece of the boat was cut out from sheets of plywood and not a single screw or nail was used to fasten the body. The entire boat is held together with fiberglass tape and epoxy putty. My cousin and I decided to coat the entire body of the boat with a light layer of epoxy for protection and reinforced the stern for a trolling motor.

Wooden Rowboat Interior

Wooden Rowboat Hull