Vista from the Oakland Hills / 1986

Vista from the hills: Redwood deck in Oakland Ca. I built this deck in the Oakland Hills during the autumn of1986......Remarkable for it's beauty & its bizarre end!.....It is the crowning glory of my years in the building trades and the project in which I take most pride. The architect was my friend Scott Wynn: I was assisted in building it by my two other friends, Reggie Guerrero and Greg Ridenour. Scott & Reggie are cabinet makers as well as Renaissance men. We all had workshops in the same funky warehouse on Brannan St in SF's SOMA district. Reggie is pictured using a router on a radius trammel cutting the 2x6 decking of the curved section. The deck is 14 feet off the ground, which caused access challenges I'd not counted upon [read: took twice as long & cost a third more, most of which I ATE as a loss!] We had to build scaffolding to get the materials raised. The curved railing is made of laminated 2x6" clear, kiln-dried heart redwood--highly prized, VERY expensive and a joy to work with! .....Four 2x6s in 20' lengths were used. Each 2x6 was ripped into 1/4" thickness on Scott's commercial band-saw. The resulting 3 pieces per rail-segment were glued and clamped together over a semi-circular frame 9 feet in diameter fabricated of 3/4" plywood. Scott engineered the gluing frame & I helped build it. Greg assisted me with the fabrication of the rails--we used about 80 or 90 clamps to hold the sections together. We did this four separate times to arrive at inside & outside rail sections for top & bottom. The redwood slats were fastened to each other using a resorcinol construction adhesive which sets up to form a bond impervious to all natural elements, save FIRE.....Unfortunately, photos of the process have gone the way of all flesh. Gabino Ramirez & his skilled craftsmen of Mexico City Iron Works executed the graceful & elegant steel spiral stair case. [Greg and I met as carpenters in a San Francisco theatrical scenery shop. He later went on to be the Chief Operations Manager of the SF War Memorial and was in charge of the SF Opera, Davies Hall & Herbst Theater.] Click this YouTube link for a unique perspective on the fire and the story of the deck................................................ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQeR0pvvp4Q .........I should also credit my friend James Dunne for his expert technical direction as video producer of the clip via iMovie. I captured the news story with my VCR that amazing weekend in 1991 as I, and the rest of the Bay Area watched the news unfold. My daughter Alison, some 21 years later, transferred the video from the VHS tape to DVD. Or, as the Grateful Dead might well have said, What a long strange trip it's been...