My Journey in Writing, Ranting, and Woodworking

“A man’s errors are his portals of discovery.”

     James Joyce

I spent many hours traveling through my own portals of discovery today.  The quest is to create a device that will hold the hose for my shop vac.  Yesterday I spent considerable time working on cutting some dovetails, which would be part of a box which would hold the hose.  That was the plan until I set the first three sides on top of the connector piece and realized that it wasn’t at all pretty to look at.

I am definitely a form over function sort of guy, and I really couldn’t stand to have an ugly shop vac hose connector.  I mean really, what would the neighbors think?  It was obvious that a more pleasing shape would be needed.  With a piece of hard maple, my compass, and a French curve I laid out the shape that would be my next design.

The smooth curve appealed to me and I took my board down to have a chat with Mary the jigsaw.  Mary looked at my board and quickly chewed the shape out of it.  With one down and three more to go, I let Mary hang out in the shop as I went back upstairs and laid out the remaining three.  Using the first one as a template I made quick work of the task.  Next I ate a bag of popcorn.

When I let Mary cut the second piece I realized that skills at making Mary follow the lines, left a bit to be desired.  Mary is quite fetching and I haven’t quite figured out where to train my eyes to get the best out of her.  I have tried looking at the outside edge of the guide and the inside edge, but I suspect that I need to try to keep the line in the center.  Like everything, the more time I spend with Mary, the better I will become.

So now I had two pieces.  If they were large boards I would route out the excess with my bit that has a guide bushing.  I have gotten pretty good at it.  It took only a few minutes to realize that the pieces were too small to clamp, and that I would have to create some sort of jig.  I recalled seeing an article on using the shop fox templates, and it seemed like they might do the trick.

I have lots of magazines now, and I spent a couple of hours flipping through them, without any luck.  I went to bed.  When I got up today I had a couple of more ideas.  But careful consideration found a flaw in each one.  When I was about to give up, I decided that I would try clamping them all together in the vice and with the 3” belt sander, try grinding away the excess.  Twenty minutes later they were all smooth and identical in size.  It took me 4 hours of fussing about, trying to find out a way to avoid grinding them down, when in the end, it turned out to be really easy.So now I needed to drill holes in them, for the hose.  I quickly made work of the first two, drilling a 1 1/4 inch hole.  My batteries were dead, so I did the logical thing; I put one in the charger and went to Milo’s Sub shop.  It was beautiful here in Iowa today.  The drive was a joy and the Italian club sandwiches were extremely tasty.

When I got home I swapped out the batteries and ate dinner.  Next I drilled out the third piece and then took a chisel to the 4^th, as I wanted a half blind light bulb mortise.  I am not sure that there is technically a thing called the half blind light bulb mortise, but I am fine with that.  You get the idea.  Using a 3/8^th inch chisel I quickly dug out a light bulb shape and the more I played with the chisel the better the shape.I don’t have a band saw, table saw, drill press, lathe, jointer, planer, nuclear powered saw mill, or any of a dozen other really fun looking tools that I see in the shops of the big kids in the magazines.  I realized today that they are mostly offer efficiency.  I have spent a dozen hours flattening my router table top, where a planer could have banged it out in a few minutes.  I spent 20 minutes grinding down my curvy pieces, where a band saw and some sand paper could have achieved the same result in 19 minutes and 47 seconds.  My belief is that many projects can be completed with a basic set of tools, a bit of patience, and the desire to solve problems.

I love the challenge.  When I was building my workbench, I recall thinking this would be a good deal easier if I had a workbench.  I have used my router half a dozen times while building my router table, each of them would have been easier on a router table.  That being said, having the workbench to build the router table has been wonderful.  I expect that the next project will benefit greatly from the router table.  Though each mile on the journey of woodworking takes me across foreign terrain, full of mysteries and dangers, the lessons learned make the continuance possible.

I cut mortise and tenons and this helped cut the dovetails, which gave me the skills to cut the half blind light bulb, and now I feel confident that I could cut almost any shape.  There are teachers who make their students learn hand tools first.  Though I don’t have a teacher, following this principal seems to be leading to great discoveries, and the progress fills me with happiness.