Denny Leak is carving a yellow cedar log - first with a chainsaw and later with hand tools - in front of the Nolan Center, turning it into a sign pole that will be displayed on the corner to help attract and welcome people to the city museum. He was still at the chainsaw stage last Friday.
The Wrangell Museum has two projects underway, both dealing with wood.
One is a new sign, being carved from a 20-foot-long yellow cedar log. The other is the ongoing effort to preserve and display the 96-year-old retired U.S. Forest Service wooden boat, the Chugach Ranger.
Wrangell carver Denny Leak started last month stripping the bark off the log and is cutting his way into the design, which will spell out MUSEUM in large block letters vertically, with an eagle and a raven carved out at the top of the pole.
The finished piece will be installed at the corner of the museum grounds across from the bank, so that visitors walking from Front Street will see it, said Museum Director Cyni Crary.
Leak was roughing out the log with his chainsaw last week, and hopes to finish the carving in June.
He started carving large pieces about a decade ago, when he was clearing some trees at his dad's cabin in Colorado and his wife suggested he turn one of the logs into a bear. Since then, he said, he has carved an eagle for the Mendenhall River Community School in Juneau, Beatrice the Beaver for Riverbend Elementary School in Juneau, and a couple of years ago carved an eagle for the Petersburg elementary school.
Even before taking on large-scale projects at his dad's cabin, Leak said he took to wood in his high school shop class.
After roughing out the design with a chainsaw, he turns to smaller hand and power tools, relying on some of the training he received from carvers on Prince of Wales Island.
Crary said she and Leak are still talking about whether to leave the cedar unpainted or not.
The log was donated by the Wrangell Cooperative Association, Crary said, which took the tree from some of its land off Zimovia Highway, just above Heritage Harbor.
"My hope is to have it raised this summer," she said of the new signpost.
The director also hopes to unveil the Chugach Ranger for public viewing sometime this summer. The 62-foot-long boat, the last wooden boat in the Forest Service fleet, was retired in 2015. It is on loan from the Forest Service and was moved from storage at The Marine Service Center to the museum property March 31.
The city museum and visitor center has been advocating the past several years to move the boat into a permanent historical display outside the center. It is currently wrapped up in a full-boat cover to protect it from the rain.
If staff can figure out a temporary covering for the boat that will allow public viewing, it could be available this summer, Crary said. But keeping the boat dry is essential. "The rain really damages it," she said.
Longer term, "we're going to be building a viewing deck that will go all the way around" the boat, allowing people to walk through the cabin, Crary said. The permanent display would include storyboards about the ship's background.
"There's so much amazing history to this boat," she said. It was built in 1925 in Seattle and was one of 11 Forest Service ranger boats that operated in the state in the early 20th century. The Chugach was first assigned to Cordova and later transferred to Petersburg in 1953.
It could take a couple of years before the viewing deck and storyboards are in place, with fundraising and grant writing on the agenda to pay for the work, Crary said.
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