Soapstone… An Alternative Meditation

As you know… cruising in a boat boils down to repairing said boat in exotic places. What does one do when wintering back in “home port”, eh? Work on boat projects of course: winterize the dink, rewire and increase the wire size of the negative and positive feeds to the electronics, track down flybridge leaks that drip when it rains really hard backed by 20 knot wind, and hopefully plug them etc. Figure out why the new refrigerator does not refrigerate up to spec, negotiate with boatyard managers to determine who will repair the busticated bow thruster. The usual culprits…

And of course… hiking through the autumn rain forest viewing the bumper crop of mushrooms, edible and poisonous. Kayaking when the weather allows. Going to the gym to pit ones body against the torture machines that live there… Swimming the requisite 2000 meters in the pool that also lives there, and soaking afterwards in the 15 person hot tub just because it is there and it is after all… cold outside. And then when all else fails… setting some time aside to repair a 55 year old piece of soapstone art that I created in high school. We were using it for a doorstop… and broke a “wing” off. Silly us.

Originally the piece was called “American Eagle”. It was submitted to an art show and I actually won an honorable mention for it. Whatever that means. It was quite crude really. I was what… 16 or 17 years old and was given a lump of soapstone by my art teacher who told me to “have at it”. And… with files, sandpaper and boiled linseed oil I came up with a fairly simple but expressive sculpture. It vaguely resembled a bird if you squinted your eyes in low light and gazed upon it…

A half century later or so later, I decided… that amongst my boating projects I would carve out some time to repair and update my American Eagle. Repairing it’s broken wing and making it more bird-like were the simple objectives.

After many hours of filing with a set of basic files, micro files and an electric dremel like tool… it was nearly complete:

Its a beautiful piece of soapstone, eh? Soapstone is an interesting medium to carve. Basically it is compressed talc. It has weak spots and cracks that have to be worked around. The imperfections direct the carving process. The broken wing was glued back on with gorilla glue. Incredibly strong. I repaired some of the cracks by making a thick slurry of sanding residue mixed into a waterproof wood glue. That was a bit of an experiment and it worked out very well.

I think she turned out well… And… of course, an updated name is also needed, eh? Any ideas on that? As Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers stated so often… write your idea on a 5$ bill and mail it to:

Just kidding. But… write a comment back with a name. Why knot?

Sculpting in exotic places is as good a meditation as any other.