Steven Maslach finds remarkable stories through his art.

Be they coarse, cracked, stately or stubby, Steve Maslach loves all the hands that crafted Kitsap County.

So he sought several of those hand’s owners, to merge their stories and handprints into art.

There’s the war hero, wounded by German tanks in a French orchard during World War II, who later had his Congressional Medal of Honor hand- delivered by former President Harry Truman.

There’s the doctor whose hands during the span of 40 years delivered 4,000 babies. And the oldest living Japanese American Bainbridge Islander who endured internment. Tribal and government leaders. A chef, a fisherman, a dancer, a writer.

In all, 16 sets of hands, ages 1 to 95, were cast.

“Everyone has a story,” said Maslach, who has worked with glass for 37 years. “A lot of those stories are seemingly unremarkable. But if you look closer, you find they really are remarkable.”

Maslach did his best to capture those stories in his latest work, a 14-foot glass boat dappled by hand prints, which will grace the new Kitsap County Administration Building in Port Orchard.

The “Kitsap Boat” required the making of more than 90 separate objects, including hand molds, models, patterns and glass castings. The sculpture consists of 12 such castings, supported by a steel cradle.

Maslach cast the glass directly from crucibles at 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit at his foundry on Blue Sky Lane.

For Maslach, the shape of a boat signifies the journey and movement of people in a common direction. He consulted local tribes to ensure the sculpture was of a texture similar to that of a traditional dugout canoe. The majority of the handprints face the bow and symbolize forward movement.

The boat will soon go on display in a 19-foot window in the recently finished county administration building as the structure’s featured piece. It will be visible from both the inside and outside of the building.

But before it ascends to its final perch, Maslach will share his work with his Bainbridge neighbors from 2 to 7 p.m. on Oct. 8 at the BPA Playhouse. He has invited all the project’s participants to join him.

Still, because he intended the piece to represent all Kitsap County residents collectively, Maslach has mostly tried to detach the names from the hands of those included in the sculpture.

“I’m trying to represent the stories of everyone,” he said. “If you use names, in a way that excludes others from the project.”

Some of his subjects, though glad to contribute, were just as happy to remain anonymous. In fact, Maslach said, humility was the common attribute among those cast. He did a lot of “detective work” in trying to track down people with interesting stories. Some were skeptical. Others were disinterested.

But Maslach was persistent, and many rewarded him by recounting in detail the stories that had shaped their pasts.

Maslach began work on the project last February. The display space was supposed to be ready in June, but was delayed slightly; the piece will likely go on display later this month.

Maslach will show other cast-glass work at The Gallery on Bainbridge Island from Nov. 3 to 28.

Though the boat is finished, Maslach’s fascination with handprints is not. He’s actually disappointed that he didn’t begin working on it sooner. Many islanders, he said, deserved to have their hands immortalized, but passed away before he got the chance to meet them. He listed former Review editor Walt Woodward among those he regrets not including.

Nonetheless, he will continue recording stories and handprints to offer future islanders a chance to connect with the instruments that clawed at the soil and clutched oars in Eagle Harbor and raised the rafters of the island’s, and the county’s, history.

“I want people to be able to see and touch them,” Maslach said. “I want people to be able to put their hand in the prints of the people that came before them.”