Author: Keeper

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Casting call: Making exact copies of original bronze fixtures

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Arthur crafts exact copies of lighthouse fixtures out of bronze. He's at Mystic Valley Foundry in Somerville, Mass.

Arthur crafts exact copies of lighthouse fixtures out of bronze. He’s at Mystic Valley Foundry in Somerville, Mass.

In restoring and refurbishing Graves Light, we try to find original items from other lighthouses and ships.

Sometimes, though, finding an exact match proves to be impossible. That was the case of the bronze brackets to hold the wooden handrails in place on the lighthouse’s winding stairs.

We had some original pieces, but couldn’t find a match anywhere.

Arthur at Mystic Valley Foundry in Somerville, Mass., helped us out. He took an original bracket and made 10 exact copies out of bronze.

Here are pictures of Arthur at the foundry, as well as a shot of the 10 copies and the original.

 

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Family of seal pups calls Graves Ledge home

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Seal pups have staked out Graves Ledge as their home.

Seal pups have staked out Graves Ledge as their home.

A new generation of seal pups is calling Graves Ledge their home.

Here are some pictures.

Meet The Twins, and a little guy we named Spotty.

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The oak ceiling is almost ready to be installed

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At his Nantucket shop, Karl Phillips works on the new oak ceiling of the 5th floor of Graves Light - a perfect copy of the ruined original.

At his Nantucket shop, Karl Phillips works on the new oak ceiling of the 5th floor of Graves Light – a perfect copy of the ruined original.

We’re getting wicked excited about a winter project that’s entering its final stages.

The oak ceiling of the Graves Light living quarters are being reconstructed, just as it would have looked in 1905.

Down on Nantucket, Driftwood Construction’s own Karl Phillips is working day and night, this time building the amazing paneled oak ceiling for the 5th floor study.

Karl already built perfect oak copies of the original casement windows, window sills, window paneling, and interior stairway doors.

He’s been using the original 1903 architectural drawings to rebuild the ceiling. But since parts of the original ceiling are still in place (despite their heavy damage), Karl was able to take measurements right off the original.

For the fun of future generations, we think we’ll install this new ceiling to cover the original old one, so that in another 100 years, people will have something to discover.

Take a look at the pictures of Karl’s latest work.

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Super ladder 2015 replaces what the storm claimed

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Super Ladder 2015 is ferried out to Graves.

Super Ladder 2015 is ferried out to Graves.

Remember that big ladder we installed on the dock last spring?

Well the November storms tore it away, and although we spent an afternoon scuba diving to find it, all we came up with was one lousy rung.

But today, friends, behold the new Super Ladder 2015!

All that's left of our 2014 ladder.

All that’s left of our 2014 ladder.

Fortified with double strength rails and bolted right to the stone pier below, this baby should last until … November?

Maybe we should take it down after the season this time. . . .

Hats off to Emmett who helped build it and Mike and Pat who helped ferry it into position using our dock fenders and a spare life ring!

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Restoring the glass skylights

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Alison works on a skylight. She's in the Lamp Room, looking down at the floor. The photographer is in the Watch Room, looking up at the ceiling.

Alison works on a skylight. She’s in the Lantern Room, looking down at the floor. The photographer is in the Watch Room, looking up at the ceiling.

Without a doubt, the most beautiful feature of Graves Light is the lantern, the glass room which housed the great Fresnel lens.

Built into the cast metal floor are 13 little round skylights that were the sole source of natural light for the Watch Room below.

The years have been kind (the heavy glass has turned from clear to a purply sun-colored amethyst) and unkind (several of them are missing or broken).

Not a problem for Alison MacDonald of ACKFire Studios.

Using one carefully removed glass tile, Alison has created a mold in her Nantucket glass studio and is busy reproducing the missing pieces.

We hope to report that by end of summer, the skylights will be fully intact again and ready for the next century of use.

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Being built on Nantucket: New oak trim for window interiors

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Wide interior oak panels for the reconstructed casement windows, made by Karl Phillips of Nantucket.

Wide interior oak panels for the reconstructed casement windows, made by Karl Phillips of Nantucket. Karl copied them from the original 1903 Graves Light architectural drawings.

Seven-foot thick granite walls make for some deep windowsills, and our man Karl Phillips is making up beautiful trim to complement, in his workshop in Nantucket.

These are the side and top panels for the window wells, based off the original native white oak interior built at the U.S. Lighthouse Establishment wood shop in Portland, Maine.

The originals are gone, so we used the 1903 architectural drawings to make copies.

Karl also made reproductions of the original interior doors this winter. Last summer, he built exact copies of the original oak casement windows, among other work.

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1,400 photos recovered from remote camera

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Planes line up to land at Logan.

Planes line up to land at Logan, as seen from the remote camera that survived the winter storms.

Remember the remote camera we installed last year to watch the lighthouse? That’s the one from which we made the stop-action video last summer.

Well, the camera survived the winter after we were thwarted from several rescue attempts.

We just recovered it – battered and bent up almost vertically after being smacked from underneath by a big wave during a winter storm. Much to our surprise, it was dry inside, and yielded 1,400 photos. A few of them are shown here.

The camera is an old digital Canon 5D with a 24mm lens, which we housed in an a steel ammunition box with a round window cut into it for the lens. We waterproofed it, and powered it with a car battery and some solar panels that we bought on Amazon.

Then we installed the camera assembly in a wooden box secured on brackets to the side of the oil house on the ledge across from the light. Lo and behold, the camera survived the winter!

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Starting springtime at Graves Light

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Lynn removes the non-original brass vent cover so that the restored originals can be installed.

Lynn sets a cleaned and restored component of the original USLHS ventilation system.

We started springtime restoration at Graves this year by wrapping up our last winter project, which was to install the original brass vent covers in the watch room.

The heavy cast covers had been lost for decades, but we found them last year, and now they’re back in place.

Lynn is shown at work on one of the vents.

These vents allowed fresh air to flow through a specially designed duct (to prevent rain and seawater from entering) and up into the lantern above where five burners produced the illuminating flame.

In the gallery below, Dave is standing on the snow-covered watch deck, holding one of the original vent covers about to be returned to its space.

Another picture shows the vent cover back in place, flanked by two portholes. We added the portholes, from a steamship that sailed at the time Graves Light was built, to provide light and ventilation in the formerly windowless watch room.

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Rebuilding the inside of Graves Light – on Nantucket

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Making exact copies of the interior doors of Graves Light at Karl Phillips' Nantucket shop.

Making exact copies of the interior doors of Graves Light at Karl Phillips’ Nantucket shop.

The snow and ice haven’t stopped the renovation of Graves Light. We’ve been using the winter months to reconstruct precise reproductions of the original interior woodwork.

Lots going on at the Nantucket workshop of Master Carpenter Karl Phillips.

Karl has finished replicating the interior stairway oak doors, and the deep oak sills of the windows that he built last summer.

One photo shows the sole surviving original interior door, rebuilt and stripped down to the wood, flanked by two reproductions to be installed in the spring.

The original door itself needed major repairs, but it provided us a good template to work from. Original 1903 US Light House Service architectural drawings of the doors helped ensure faithful reproductions.

Karl also built nine new oak windowsills using one rotted original sill (in the foreground of the gallery picture below) as a guide.

Just wait until he installs these with his oak paneling – still under construction – to fill in the deep window pockets!

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Chillin’ at Graves on a February day

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GL 2015.02.07eFinding a rare calm day between back-to-back-to-back Nor’ Easters in February, we chanced a winter maintenance trip to check on leaks, reload the cameras and stuff like that.

The seas were cold and choppy, but when our man Randy made it to the ladder we thought we were “on station.”

Not to be.

An easterly swell out lifted our little dinghy onto the cross-brace of the dock and punched a hole in the side, and it immediately started leaking fast.

We abandonded post and rowed like mad to the safety of the Keepah and Captains Meg and Pat.

Whew – if that dinghy had sunk we’d either be stranded on the ladder or tossed into the sea. Needed a couple of cold Harpoon ales over at KO Pies to settle after that one!

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