The construction of seagoing vessels may not be something normally associated with this part of the country, but Cochrane’s Miles Chester is building a budding reputation in the craft nonetheless.
Chester’s love of woodwork began at the age of eight, when he watched his uncles carving things like gunstocks. Both his uncles were talented carvers, passing on their love of the art to him.
He wasn’t as interested in guns as his brothers were, so he eventually gravitated towards ships instead.
“When I was 13 or 14, they wanted me to be on the straight and narrow, and that (carving) turned out to be a passion for me,” Chester said.
At 16, he built his first ship: the HMCS Nonsuch, which is proudly displayed on the mantle at his home in Sunset Ridge.
Some 40 years later, the passion for creating true-to-scale replicas of famous military ships is evident in his voice and mannerisms as he describes the painstaking details of his work. He estimates he spends anywhere from 600 to 1,000 hours working in his basement on a particular ship.
Chester noted he does not spend all his free time down there, as there are key conditions that affect when he can indulge his passion.
“Whenever my wife doesn’t need me up here,” he quipped with a smile from his kitchen.
He counts among his clients the Naval Museum of Alberta in Calgary. They commissioned him to build replicas of some famous ships, such as the HMCS Rainbow and HMCS Niobe, which date back to pre-World War I. His most ambitious project for the naval museum was re-creating the HMCS Calgary, which is over five feet long.
He can’t give an estimate of how long that project took, in hours.
“That one would be in years,” he said. “That took me easily four years.”
The model currently in progress, on display in the kitchen – the HMCS Harry De Wolf – was moved to his downstairs workshop after the interview was over. It is an offshore patrol vessel designed for use in the Arctic regions of Canada for patrol and support.
Typically, clients who commission Chester’s work will pay for his materials, and he does the labour in exchange for a tax receipt. For his smaller projects, he estimates materials cost between $400 and $700. Some of his ships end up in people’s private homes, as well as in museums.
His costs are going up, as they are for all types of construction. Chester said the plastic he uses has doubled in cost in the last couple of years because it’s an oil-based product, and cedar has never been cheap.
He added he rummages around the bottom of bins in lumber yards, looking for pieces that have been there for at least a year as they are the driest, and best for shipbuilding.
While his passion for the meticulous work is obvious, Chester said he’s just as motivated by learning and passing on the history of some of the ships he so vividly re-creates, which he does via his Facebook page.
“The fun part is learning the history of these ships. And I have to turn some old pictures into scale drawings, and the pictures aren’t the clearest back in 1914, 1915,” he said.
‘And I’m always teaching on Facebook.”
