Peter Chaffee is used to filling custom orders for odds and ends needed for all manner of marine trades.

“I never build the same thing twice,” said Chaffee, owner of Peter’s Marine, 315 10th St. in Port Townsend. “Everything is always different. Soup to nuts.”

But his latest project, a one-eighth scale railroad drawbridge, was something he did not expect.

“I did work for the local guys here who build the track, and they are train enthusiasts all over the U.S., and he had a client in Lincoln City, Oregon, and he came and said, ‘I want a bridge to go over my driveway. Here is a design for you.’ They built a wood prototype to test it, and then said, ‘Here is what we got.The length will be different, but it will work.’”

The 23-foot drawbridge, expected to be completed by the end of January, is made out of aluminum and will be topped with extruded aluminum railroad tracks, Chafee said.

“Everything is just scaled down,” he said. “It is not heavy at all, not really. On each side of the driveway (the customer) had a contractor come in and put in these concrete abutments that this mounts on to.”

The pieces of the drawbridge will be opened on command by a garage door opener.

“Push a button, and werp, werp,” Chaffee said. “It is a gate slash railroad bridge.”

The ends of the bridge include a bucket to hold lead that will act as a counterweight.

The bridge will incline about 80 degrees, Chaffee said, high enough for a vehicle to pass underneath.

The bridge includes decking to walk across.

Large enough to ride

A one-eighth scale railroad is large enough for people to ride on, Chaffee said.

“The client lives on top of a mountain, and he is building this all himself,” he said. “It goes around his little mountain and through his Christmas tree lot and his orchard, and it is for his grandkids to ride on. This guy is a pretty talented fella. He has pictures of the trestles he is building and the little tunnels for the train.”

The unpainted aluminum bridge is designed to handle the weight of the scale railroad cars and engine and the human riders, Chaffee said

“When you have a truss like that, it can hold thousands of pounds,” he said. “I have an engineer that does some calculations for me once in a while. He is a retired nuclear engineer, so he can do all the load calcs if he knows the weights of something going across it. He said you’ve got an 8-to-1. And there are legs in the middle that fold up as it goes up.”

Chaffee has been working on the project for the past six or seven months.

“I cut all the parts and put the side rails together, and then set it off to the side because I was so busy with other stuff,” he said. “Bob got free, so I was able to move ahead on it.”

Bob Milligan works at Peter’s Marine.

“It has been a month, a lot of welding,” Milligan said. “It is more interesting than boats. It is almost done.”

The client is expected to pick the bridge up Jan. 30, but Chaffee and Milligan may go to the property to help with the installation.

Chafee said building a railroad bridge has connected him with Port Townsend’s past.

“It is kind of ironic, or kind of a twist, that Port Townsend originated because the railroad was supposed to come here,” he said. “And then, it went to marine and harbor, and now it’s back to building railroad bridges. Full circle.”

Latest in unique orders

When trying to pick his most memorable commission, Chaffee scratches his head.

“That would be a hard one to say,” he said. “I have done some pretty unique stuff. This would have to be up in the top five.”

That is saying something for a man who has pretty much done it all.

“I couldn’t even think of all the stuff I have done,” he said. “Airplanes, boats. I built parts for Paul Allen’s submarine. I drilled parts for a man-powered helicopter, no engine.”

Chaffee doesn’t know if the helicopter actually ever made it off terra firma.

Although he has fabricated strange and interesting items for customers, Chaffee gets a lot of pleasure from simple jobs.

“An old guy, 70 years old, walks in here with his wife’s stainless teapot,” Chaffee recalled. “The handle broke off. So I go over to the (welding) machine and go tink, tink. Took me three minutes.”

The customer asked what he owed.

“Nothing,” Chaffee replied. “That is for you and the wife.”

The look of pleasure on their faces was all the payment he needed.

“Then I had a kid come in here the other day with an aluminum bike frame that had a crack in it so I welded it for him,” Chaffee said. “He came back and said, ‘Thanks, what do I owe you? I said I usually have a half-hour minimum, $30. Kid goes, ‘Oh I will have to go and see if I can get some money from my dad.’ I said, ‘How much you got?’ He had $4. I says, ‘Good enough.’ It is that kind of stuff that makes a community work.”

And community is what the waterfront is all about, Chaffee said.

Word of mouth

Chaffee is content in his shop, saying business seems to find him.

“Because I never do the same thing, I do a lot of work for the other businesses here in town,” he said. “I think because I am so diversified there is always something. Every day something new comes in that door. It is just a wonderful thing.”

Looking around his shop, Chaffee took stock of the assortment of orders he is working on.

“I just sent out an aluminum fuel tank this morning,” he said. “These are screens for a salmon hatchery, and over on the table I am starting to put together frames for silk-covered lights for something an artist is doing. That is quite a span right there.”

Chaffee works mostly with aluminum and stainless steel.

“Aluminum I call silver wood,” Chaffee said. “It is real pliable. You use the same tools you would with wood.”

Chaffee said he’s “old school,” and he’s been in business since the early 1970s. He started in Ballard before he moved to Port Townsend.

“My motto is ‘Anything over six (hours a day or work) is uncivilized,’” he said. “I have one ad in the local paper, but then people come in and tell me, ‘I found you online. I said, ‘How did you do that? I don’t even own a computer.’ I have had customers that were so tickled that they put me (online).”