What are you doing next week?

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Ben

I had an interesting conversation with one of my closest friends the other day.

He called me up and asked what I was doing next week. I told him I had no definitive plans. Seeing his window he asked if I would help him make three fairly massive bookcases for their home. Some would hold their tv, stereo, turntable and other random electronics and some would hold cds, dvds, and other knickknacks. I didn’t know what to say. I gave the obvious “sure, I’m busy now let’s talk about it more later” answer to buy myself some time.

My friend has never made anything out of wood… nothing. So helping him make bookcases is more akin to him helping me make him bookcase. I am more than comfortable with this scenario. It isn’t the work or the scale of the project that knocked me off my feet. It was the time frame.

I don’t know about you but I require a fair bit of time to wrap my head around a project. Between planning, drawing and budgeting it seems like I spend more time planning a project than I do actually executing it. I don’t have a very large shop. I don’t have a very well equipped shop. I don’t even have a pickup truck, so the mere act of buying the sheet goods is even an issue.

Thankfully I was able to explain this to my friend and put the project off until after the holidays. By then I will have a better (i.e. usable) table saw, we can get a decent game plan going, and most importantly we will both be mentally prepared for the task at hand.

It does leave me wondering though if I need more mental preparation time than most. How long would you need to be ready to build three large and fairly complicated bookshelves?

Do you have G.A.S.?

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Ben

Gear Acquisition Syndrome

The acronym is commonly used by musicians. They are well known for always thinking that they are one piece of gear away from nirvana and that one last piece is going to fill a hole left by skill or talent. In reality no piece of gear is going to make their recordings sound better.

As a musician by trade… I hate G.A.S. It drives me nuts. I use as little gear as I can without the quality suffering. It seems like the more amateurish musicians are, the more they blame the gear.

So why am I talking about musicians? I think an alarming number of woodworkers suffer from G.A.S. You and I both know it should be Tool Acquisition Syndrome but woodworkers and musicians also share an affinity toward fart jokes.

Few of us really need every tool in the chest, have no redundancies, and nothing sitting unused collecting (saw)dust. For many of us collecting tools is an important part of the hobby, and that’s fine. Some people rarely use the tools at all. If there was a scale between “tool collector” and “tool user” I’d much rather tip it towards the “user” end.

When I first got into woodworking I had a an interesting conversation with my wife’s uncle Ray Jones. Ray’s woodwork and turning are second to none. I respect what he has to say on everything, especially woodworking. His message was simple. You don’t need all of the tools that they’d like to make you think you need. Use what you have. Figure out a way of getting it done with what you have. Many people have done more with far less.

I took the message to heart because it makes sense. I passionately feel the same way about musical gear.

I’ve tried to come up with some ground rules for buying tools.

If the tool you have is dangerous, replace it.
If a tool is really going to make your final product better, buy it.
If a tool is going to open up an avenue of creativity that wasn’t open before, buy it.
If you are making money and a tool will speed up the process and therefore cover it’s own investment, buy it.
If all of the bloggers are using it and it’s so friggin’ cool and oh mah gawd… I gotta have it, wait awhile, then don’t buy it.
You’ve gotta have a really good reason to have redundancies in your tool collections (how many festool sanders do you guys really need?)

If I had lots and lots of money and bought a tool when I thought I needed one I’d have a basement filled with tools that were all wrong for what I do. I went from wanting every power tool ever made, to wanting to be an all hand tool user, to being a “use what works best” woodworker. I don’t need stacks of planes the same way I don’t need five routers. I just thought I did.

I used to have a rule about musical instruments. When I was ready to buy something, money in hand I would wait three days. If after those three days I still wanted it, I bought it. I was shocked how many times I changed my mind after a few days.

These days I am more apt to wait three weeks when mulling over a tool purchase. The financial stakes are relatively the same, but my education level and justification is generally much weaker.

All of this to say… I think I’m gonna be buying a new table saw soon. My current one is dangerous, inaccurate, and even though I make very little money woodworking it is slowing down my production enough to justify the purchase. Thus begins the long process of research, accounting and getting rid of the emotional factor as much as I can.

Plus it’ll be sssoooo coooooolllll!!!!11!!1

Dreaming of woodworking

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Ben

Some nights I dream about building a fine piece of furniture, the curls of cherry, dovetails sliding perfectly into place. Some nights it is endlessly sneaking up on a cut that always goes askew, over and over again.

A few nights ago I dreamt that Chris Schwarz opened a workbench factory here in Nashville and I was working my way up through the ranks. Flattening tops, fitting tenons, riving pegs. Even the architecture of the building in my dream was filled with wonder. It might have been a castle if I remember correctly. Every blade was sharpened to a beautiful point of nothingness. Every board I set on a bench automatically had the grain in the right direction.

I woke up from that dream half disappointed it wasn’t real and half excited to get to the shop that day.

Well… here I am a few days later, 5:22 a.m., typing away on a keyboard that seems infinitely louder because my lovely wife is sleeping one room over.

My inner psyche could take no more of my dream. Cutting a 45 in a piece of poplar for the 500th time… my mind decided to wake my body up. Thirst was it’s original excuse, but my mind decided that it was not going to let my body sleep again tonight.

Oh well.

I spent most of the day in the shop yesterday. It was one of those days that makes you remember that somebody out there somewhere hates going into the shop every day. Most days, when I head off to work I am going into a recording studio… many of those days I’d rather be in the shop. Well yesterday I was reminded that some people in a shop dream of being in a recording studio.

It really is a silly world.

In the two hours since I’ve been awake though I have really accomplished a quite a bit. Two hours of waiting for sleep to come is good problem solving time. In that time I have mentally worked my way through all of the prior days woodworking mishaps. Hopefully once the wife leaves for work and I get through my hour of sipping coffee and seeing what is new on this here interwebs, I can head down into the basement and undo the undoing of yesterday’s shop time.

Sometimes a restless night can be good for the soul.