The Last Man Standing game has golf tees, similarly shaped pegs or marbles placed in holes/spaces arranged in a triangular pattern. There are 15 holes and 14 game pieces leaving one space empty. A single player must jump each game piece, like checkers, until all but one remains. I was asked to make this game and recalled seeing a template for it using marbles. The template was sold as a set which includes Tic Tac Toe so I decided to make a dual game. Marbles tend to roll off the table and under the couch, just beyond your reach, getting lost and forgotten until your vacuum cleaner rather noisily finds them! The logical solution was to build a box to store the marbles with a lid that serves as the board. I routed a rail on opposing sides to hold marbles for playing Tic Tac Toe, and drilled two holes completely through the lid. It’s much easier to quickly drop the marbles into the box after each jump (or when finished playing either game) than chasing the rolling buggers all over the place. Since the templates are the same size I put a game on each side of the lid.

One of my favorite projects started out as a typical square chest of drawers. I needed a dresser for a nautical themed basement bathroom and wanted it to match the vanity. Many hours were spent measuring and sketching designs, but the moment construction began, all plans went down the drain. On a whim, I decided to try something different --think outside the box. I had purchased large round mirrors and a working porthole for the room and realized a fishbowl shape would fit nicely with the theme. Going by a general height, width and depth, I started cutting a rounded shape and figured things out as work progressed. It took less time to build the entire piece than fleshing out the details for the original chest. The most difficult part of the project was applying ¼ inch plywood to the curved sides. Months after the dresser was completed I discovered bendable plywood! Next time…

As a woodcrafter, I spend a good amount of time fishing for unique pieces of wood, both common and exotic. My search runs the gamut from my own back yard, to digging thru cut offs discarded on an exotic wood dealers’ garage floor, to the swamps of North Island, New Zealand. No, I have not literally traveled across the pond for that special piece of exotic heaven; although the temptation to see, first hand, the recovery process for Ancient Kauri is indeed great. Instead, I turn to the web, where Robert Teisberg of Ancientwood, Ltd. has taken fishing for trees to a whole ‘nother level.


New Zealand’s most famous native tree, the Ancient Kauri, felled by natural forces and buried in a cocoon like state underground for thousands of years, is being excavated from farm and ranch lands of North Island. The logs are radio carbon dated to be over 50,000 years old and the oldest known ‘workable’ wood discovered. It has an iridescent quality called whitebait, aptly named after schools of New Zealand whitefish that emit light one minute, only to disappear the next, creating a shimmering effect. Ancientwood Ltd. recovers the logs in an eco-friendly way, returning the harvested sites back to its original landscape. A daunting task considering the giant Kauri grows up to 150 feet in height and 60 feet in girth. That’s a lot of tree!


Needless to say, with its rarity and intensely laborious harvesting process, a board of this exotic tree is extremely expensive. I’ve been contemplating a small purchase (under $100) for nearly a year now. My goal is to work with as many different species of trees I can snag, turning each into lasting pieces of art, art that is most times practical, sometimes whimsical and always pleasing to the eye. Some of my favorite projects, from Bocote guitar picks and ‘Dog Ear’ Boxes to an 8 foot tall Pez, will find their way to this blog –eventually. As for the Ancient Kauri tree.. It’s high time I reel this one in!