sisyphus

my weekends have been spent hunting down elusive slabs of wood
how many beauties I've passed
I'd have a garage full by now if I stopped to pick each rose

what I seek instead is one with straight, even grain
boring old pieces yellowed from the store's florescent daylight

as I plane the transformation is unspeakable
some have been hiding immaculate fiddleback
most of which will be concealed once again

with each new section, the original bench is dismembered
only a couple bits have given me any fight

I really didn't know that much back then

the only thing holding some of the sections together was a Masonite spline

amazing what you learn in a few years

I still need a bench

it's my feeble attempt to keep enough mass containing dog holes to continue work

right now the center section remains the original bench top
the tool trough will inhabit the right hand upper third
for me, the most rarely used parcel except for stashing my winding sticks and hold fasts

the mountain I alluded to earlier is that from my planes
an endless stream emanates from the various versions of my bench

so many surfaces!
and they must mate
at least as close as I am willing to take them
I remind myself that it is a bench
the only one who will look at it closely is myself
and that, I will
so any imperfection will nag at me forever

in creating three sections
or rather two new sections and wedging in an ever dwindling core of the original
I've been able to manage the wind that plagues a multiple lamination

the end vise has been properly installed as is currently in heavy use

and making high marks for both of its intended purposes

each face presents a new challenge
a new work out
some more aches
a couple blisters, though those are by now few and far between

and a hell of a lot more glue than I would have imagined

and no you are not imagining; the front apron is not pounded home
I can still get a flat bar in to pop it free and the whole top comes apart

oh
just a funny thought...

all those years ago I bored the dog holes 4 and a half inches apart
guess what the optimum distance based on the travel of the end vise is...

toil

where do I begin to describe a week of work

dimensioning four pieces of hard maple

bench-sized pieces

it's one thing to flatten a board
take out the wind
make it an even thickness throughout
it's another entirely to mate it flawlessly to a second
now make all those faces add up to a bigger piece with no wind, warp or curl

are you confused yet?
I realize the images are not following the commentary
it's been a week
a lot's been done
many photos have been took
most of them boring

Monday
Tuesday
that's all a blur now

I keep thinking;
it's only five more boards
I can do a tool trough on the back quarter

then I get to planing

the majority of my week has been working through the planes

course
medium
smooth

the joinery is my rest period

 a time to think about details far in the future

just glad the band saw made it this far

intermission

now that the dining room is nearly complete
I'm left with an overwhelming sense of absence
I no longer have something to work on
inward I turn

my bench was the first thing I made
and it has been set up backward since the beginning
I'm not a lefty
but my bench is

my future father in law had given me a pair of steel bench screws
one of which just begged to become a leg vise

I made the chop from a length of 2x6 in the corner
and the guide from a bit of walnut that happened to be the right dimensions
it creaked like the smoothly polished floor of an old house
the bench moaned as it experienced new forces never before fathomed
but the chop kept tightening, but never enough
it flexed so much I feared for its future
the top eighth of an inch no longer touched the bench

this just wasn't going to work
so I pursued alternative materials
a nice chunk of maple
some much needed revisions to the design
a good crank on the screw
and

maple's hard...

holy crap!
cranked down tight a test piece in the jaws was immobile
but peering around the side I saw the leg of my bench deflecting nearly an inch!
now I feared for my own life
I slowly backed off the screw
and headed back to the lumber yard

basically the whole contraption is now self contained

bolted to the front of my bench

and only passing through the structural members

I fear the dawning realization that I have begun the ball rolling
this will amount to a new bench in the end
till then; everything I've built has been on this bench
and it's still not over $500 yet

there's still the matter of an end vise of some sort

evolution

how did you begin wood working?
 
when did that errant thought enter your otherwise (or not) unreceptive mind
and you sat down, overwhelmed by the thought of this new-found future unfolding before you
beginning in the exact moment you will now cherish forever

and you created monuments and mementos and diaries
to immortalize that moment and not let it go wasted
and even now you are reading this asking why you are not out in the shop
remembering why you started doing this to begin with

before that moment the thought had never occurred to me
gee...I'm going to start wood working
I had a circular saw and could cut lengths of borg store pine to make shelves stacked by cinder block
and I made plenty of other stuff
paintings and assemblages and sculptures and parade floats
and sand sculptures

then I met Arielle

and we needed furniture
furniture we could live with and use
and would have to look at for however long it lasted
and sure it was a little more expensive (still that borg store pine)
but I could make it to suit

and then I thought...
time for a shop
because with a table saw I could do this

and with that I could do this
and after that how bout a router
needs a table
and now a drill press, and a sander, and a band saw, and a...
hey wait, this all costs alot and I haven't really made anything with it yet

looking back I could have spent all that money on hand tools and this would have come out so much better

 luckily I didn't have to look far, I fell in love with tools, and the process and the fact that I had neigboors and there was a river running through my shop in the monsoon season
and it was DARK

and through this all I discovered joinery other than butt
and made something for comission
not that it didn't actually cost me money to make it

and then an abode that tingled my imagination happened our way

and the obsession was allowed to run amok

so this is pretty much where my blog begins
you may want to go back to the start and refresh yourself
some of it makes sense now
hopefully most of it doesn't
the pictures tell a story
and the story I write is not always perfect