Master Cabinetmaker Will installs his mahogany crown molding in the kitchen (watch deck).
Four original cast iron pieces were lost years ago, but once Uncle Mike gives the mahogany replacements a fresh coat of paint, they blend right in with the rest!
Back-to-back great weather days let us get stuff done!
Up from Karl’s Nantucket wood shop, we load the custom-built curved kitchen cabinets aboard Miss Cuddy.
In the gallery below, John and the gang install the “fair weather ladder” as Lynn surveys the cove (really), we all haul the new kitchen cabinets 90 feet up using a new “super bag,” and Randy applies spar varnish to the kitchen benches.
Pat attached the spliced line to an antique US Lighthouse Service block.
Cap’n Pat splices line to hang a lamp.
Staying at Graves during the nor’easter meant that the guys would spend the eve of St. Patrick’s Day eve having some quiet fun when the storm hit.
We took an antique U.S. Light House Establishment (USLHE) dock lantern, and repurposed it to become a hanging lamp in the kitchen.
The kitchen is on the watch deck just below the operational U.S. Coast Guard navigational beacon.
Cap’n Pat spliced an old length of line through an old USLHE pulley block.
Then we hung the lantern from the apex of the arch formed by the recovered First Order Fresnel Lens, just beneath the navigational beacon.
Then we hung the lantern beneath the actual navigation lamp.
We loaded the heavy bench on the Miss Cuddy in East Boston.
We had quite an adventure installing the custom-built curved mahogany kitchen benches in the Watch Room. The pictures tell the story.
Nat of NMT Woodworking shows some of the mahogany benches he built for our kitchen.
Meanwhile, Nat and the lads at NMT Woodworking in South Portland, Maine, have been busy.
Living space at Graves Light is at a premium – none mores than the kitchen on Level 6. That’s the old Watch Room, a circular room of bronze and steel that sits on top of the granite tower and just below the glass Lamp Room.
The NMT crew created this custom mahogany bench seat to fit against the curved wall.
They built it for serious chowder eating. The marine-grade mahogany is able to withstand extreme temperatures and salt air.
You can see how the curvature matches that of the bronze kitchen stove that our man Wyatt designed over the winter.
Nat will be installing the bench system this week, weather permitting, as always. So stay tuned.
With his high school engineering education and his own imagination, Wyatt designs the stove for a small space with curved walls.
Without any flat interior walls, a lighthouse needs custom-made everything. Since kitchen space is the most precious, and the sea air corrosive of steel, conventional appliances just won’t work.
Wyatt’s bronze stovetop, fresh from the metal shop.
Luckily, Wyatt is studying engineering in high school. After drawing out the exact curve of the interior wall of the watch room, Wyatt whipped up a curved stovetop design on his computer.
We sent Wyatt’s design to a metal shop, which crafted a stovetop out of 1/2-inch thick bronze, using a water jet cutter.
The rest is up to us. We’re modifying propane barbecue burners to fit under the top and will design a curved faceplate for the knobs.
Can you smell a delicious chowder simmering this summer?
The stovetop design: Wyatt measured the curve from the lighthouse radius, for fabrication from a sheet of half-inch-thick bronze.
