Tuesday, February 14, 2023

there's a tv show you might get a lot of satisfaction from on the Discovery channel, " The Craftsman ", about Eric Hollenbeck, and his victorian job shop that produces custom architecture for the victorian homes in Eureka Ca. Episode 1 is about fixing up a trolley


this needed to be restored (as you can see the original look above, and the current look below) it's a recreation of an 1866 trolley built for Brazil's Emperor Dom Pedro












Blue Ox's custom woodworking epitomizes the quality and longevity of the previous century’s craftsmen, and will last far into the new century, whether custom-made interior and exterior moldings, balusters and columns, custom wood windows, wood doors, redwood gutter, corbels, gable decorations, any Victorian gingerbread 





Master craftsman and woodworker Eric Hollenbeck and his family are in the restoration business, taking historic homes and forgotten treasures around his hometown of Eureka, California, and giving them new life.

The family of machines at Blue Ox dates from 1866 to 1948. A self-proclaimed "gyppo" (the old-school slang for independent lumberjacks), Hollenbeck has pulled most of the antique machinery out of blackberry bushes and from abandoned sawmills. "I got all the old junk nobody wants," he says with a laugh. He figures out how to fix them and builds what he needs to maintain them — hence the foundry and blacksmith shop.

65% of the original buildings are still in use in Eureka, they are those brightly colored Victorian homes... 

The Blue Ox Millworks recreated Lincoln's hearse, and the gutters on Emily Dickenson's house


Back in 1973, Hollenbeck bought a piece of derelict property on Humboldt Bay with a $300 bank loan and a leap of faith from the local building department. Over the years, Blue Ox Mill and Historic Park has evolved from a salvage logging company to encompass a full production millworks shop, smithy, foundry, apothecary, print shop, ceramics, stained glass and fabrics studio, working history museum, high school, veteran's program, radio station and a nonprofit organization.

One of only eight remaining Victorian mills in the country, Hollenbeck says it's the most complete job shop in the United States.

A Eureka boy, Hollenbeck dropped out of school at 14 and went to work in the woods. Called up for the draft at 18, he spent seven and a half straight months on the frontlines as a radioman with the 101 Airborne. "I was in the heaviest combat in Vietnam at 19 years old," he says. "We were in the jungle the whole time." He pulls out a picture taken by AP photographer Art Greenspon.



(This April 1968 file photo shows the first sergeant of A Company, 101st Airborne Division, Watson Baldwin, guiding a medevac helicopter through the jungle foliage to pick up casualties suffered during a five-day patrol near Hue, April 1968.  https://taskandpurpose.com/history/vietnam-war-help-from-above/  https://www.ocregister.com/2015/05/04/iconic-photos-the-vietnam-war-through-the-photographers-eyes/ )

 It's one of the most wrenching, iconic war photos of our time, "See that antenna?" Hollenbeck runs a calloused finger across the black and white image, "That's me. I was the radio man." (just out of the frame of this cropped image on the lower right hand side ((I didn't crop it, this is the only copy I found online))) 

Discharged early because his father died, Hollenbeck was suddenly sole provider for his mom and younger brother.

In the decades since his return from Vietnam, Hollenbeck has fought to resurrect his identity. "I'm a craftsman," he attests, "But you can't never replace the soldier. It's burned in there." With this perspective, Hollenbeck started a program at Blue Ox in 2014 to help fellow veterans redefine themselves in the wake of coming home from war. Hollenbeck says returning vets have one job: to find a new identity. He aims to facilitate that process by teaching them to build something they can hold up to the world at large and say: "That's me. I did that. That's what I do."


There is parallel work afoot in the Blue Ox Community High School, an alternative school for at-risk teens Hollenbeck and his wife Viviana run in conjunction with the Humboldt County Office of Education. Hollenbeck says he is particularly well suited for working with these students. "Because I'm one of those kids that quit school. I can work with them because I understand them. I've got empathy for them." He exhales a plume of sweet tobacco smoke. "I couldn't read. That's why I left school. They kept telling me I was stupid."






this was a 2 hour article (until 2 days later when I added the below after learning he uses a Dodge slant 6 to power this, originally steam powered, 4 head moulding machine)




He has a rare 1912 4 Hermance square head 4 side moulder, and it was originally run on steam, but because he didn't have the means to add a steam generator, he went to the power company to see about running electricity to the building it's in, a very large building near his saw mill, and they said it would cost $750 a month, even if he didn't run the machine and use electricity, just to charge him the rate for "stand by" electricity.











SO, he did the smart thing, and got a junkyard 1960s Dart, and pulled the slant six out of it (most of you know those will simply last forever nearly trouble free) and used that and it's transmission to power the moulder.... because he won't ever have to pay a monthly fee, never get a bill from the electric company for that building, and he can use the transmission to adjust the head speed of the moulding machine.











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