Projects of JRF

Projects of J.R. Frizzle It often comes up in conversation, people ask what our Dad did create in his basement. We hope to add pictures of many of these projects.

Bronze Jewelry, model airplanes of seven varieties of aircraft.

These pieces were given to all of the blood decendants of Dads at his funeral. Jim, Norman, Doug, Randy, Luke, Denyse, and Hunter each received an aircraft. These were crafted probably about 1953. There were some other pieces of jewelry.

Pedal Car – This was built about 1950 for Jim. Car – This automobile was built or rebuilt from a smashed vehicle about 1950 and was featured with an article in the local newspaper.

Photography, there was a full darkroom setup. It was never used in Allen Heights (1963). Probably set up in Ottawa, Namao, and Portage La Prairie. Dad had two Leica cameras, one with a separate light meter, one internal metered, and a glass plate portrait camera. He took probably a thousand photos from wartime (1940) until his death.

Bedroom set, including man’s and woman’s bureau, and a headrest with storage. These were so called modern design of blonde plywood in natural finish. Denyse has this set.

Marquetry, there are perhaps three portraits of erotic women, (Doug has one,) two scenes with aircrafts, a T­33 (Doug), a Sunderland/Irish landscape (Doug) Table – a living room end table with inlay wood (Doug).

One cottage, MacGregor Lake, built about 1949, Gatineau region of Quebec.

252 Parklea Drive, Allen Heights, this home was taken from a Florida design home. The dwelling was redesigned as his retirement home, built by Lester Smith contracting.

Planter and liquor cabinet – this piece of furniture was in the entrance to 252. two copper planters were built into the cabinet, a safe occupied the centre and to cupboards were on the left and right; the finish was natural maple, modern design (60s), with fabric inlayed on the cabinet doors.

Shuffleboard – Dad built an outdoor shuffleboard game down by the waterfront. The game was very popular in the summer heat aided by cool refreshments.

Downstairs at 252 we had a hardwood maple shuffleboard table that was used often. Dad built three other beds, completing and selling two other units. He had hoped that there would be a good commercial market for the tables at taverns etc., but there was not. /mnt/work/conversion/processing/090429161440­2d8545481c5a45debecfe233e423f76b_attempt_1/original.file 3

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Two other homes were designed and built/ contracted on adjacent properties to 252, for sale and rental. At one time, Dad and some other individuals considered buying the remainder of Allen Heights – there were plans of a golf course on the central property.

Astra Equipment Limited – was the family company, with Dad as President and Mom as Secretary. The company was around for many years but did not really ever make business sense.

Investing – Dad bought stocks for many years, Jim has the evidence of some of those purchases.

Several like Clairtone Sound Corporation, went bankrupt. He used James Richardson and Sons as his broker when we lived in Manitoba. One oft used quote was ‘I should have had my head red’. We think in the long term he did all right with his investments.

Boats ­ aluminium, wood, fibreglass, Kevlar.

They varied from hunting punts to a 32 foot cabin cruiser with twin V­8 engines. The later was built as a pre­retirement project in Portage La Prairie. The final work was done in an aircraft hanger on the base as the project was too big for the bases woodworking shop. They had to take the end off the shop in order to get the inverted shell of the boat out. The completed cruiser slept six, and had a full galley.

Norman and Doug water skied behind the boat, it was very fast for it’s time. It was shipped to Halifax by rail. We know he must have built two dozen boats. The aluminium boat was about 16 feet long and was hand riveted about every 3 cm. The list of boats included a small sailboat and at least one kayak. One of the other fiberglass boats was an inboard, built in Alberta perhaps. It was also shipped to Halifax when he retired.

Trailers – He built a number of trailers for his boats, planes and other projects. Licensing and inspections for these ‘homebuilts’ were always problematic as the inspection process was not well developed for designed at home carriage.

Flying aircraft – Rutan VariEze, example shown. Dad and one other person built this and flew it from Halifax International Airport (now Stanfields International Airport).

Silver Dart – this was a model done as a half scale by Dad and three others (Horst Kochanoff, Lowel Binder, and …). It was displayed at Expo in Vancouver, 197x.

Flying aircraft – there were at least three other aircraft built, two were float planes.

Hovercraft – This project was never completed by Dad; he seemed to loose interest and we did not encourage the project since by /mnt/work/conversion/processing/090429161440­2d8545481c5a45debecfe233e423f76b_attempt_1/original.file 3

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then he had lost his drives licence, first, and his pilots licence later on. (He was so anxious to retain these licenses that he even resorted to bribery attempts in order to retain them. He had major eyesight problems in later life) The basement – Dad’s basement was where he spent eight hours a day, virtually every day of his retired life. It was equipped with electric welders, Gas welding, metal lathe, table saw, drill press, sand blaster, layout and workbench tables, jig saw (with Brian Hoyt), wood and metal band saws, grinder, and a huge assortment of hand and portable power tools (many in duplicate).

There was also a boat shed that was used to store larger projects – boats and aircraft.

David Preston Smith portrait of JRF. This is a project about Dad, not by him. It was commissioned by the three sons to celebrate his seventieth birthday and his last airplane.

Originally the painting was to cost in the order of a thousand dollars – the painter is renowned.

The painting ended up taking more than four months to complete and in the end was not affordable by us. The style is super­realistic and is a great and truthful portrait of the man and his work habits.

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