Woodworking
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I no longer have the same hands that I did thirty years ago, but I do still have the same wood-carving gouge. |
Way and away back in the Seventies, when I finally was no longer living in a rented apartment, I succumbed to the ravishing photography in the catalogs of Garrett Wade, and bought myself a big heavy German woodworking bench. Then came a succession of hand tools, with which I made myself into a genuine woodbutcher. I had learned the basics of woodworking from my father, and from Mr. Stannard in Shop classes in PS 42, but I had few real skills. Over the years, though, and little by little, I got somewhat better.
Very early in the Pasadena years, when there was no desk space for our big laser printer, I made a cart to hold the monster, something we could roll back and forth between us. The cart was almost the first largish project that I ever actually finished, and as of this writing, it’s still in use, fourteen or so years later, even though the current printer is considerably smaller. I took no pictures of the process of making it, we’ll have to be satisfied with the recent picture to the left. In comparison to later productions, the piece is very simple. The joinery is nothing but rabbeting, and in fact some of the seams opened very early. As you’ll see down below, however, I’m working on a new and bigger cart that will hold both our current laser printer and my extremely large 13′′ ink-jet.
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The tool is actually called a “veiner”, and I’m using it to put in the veins of the leaf. |
Some time in 2000, I decided to make a box for Madison to use for keeping small treasures in. I think every kid should have a special box of that kind. It was to be in the shape of a leaf, and the picture to the right shows me working on the lid. You can see more pictures, both earlier and later, taken during the process, including several shots of the completed box on a separate page.
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Around 2000 and 2001, our daughters in Rhode Island went to a play-space that had a special toy: a little cart that one girl could climb into, if she was small enough, and another could push her about in. When the girls stopped going to that play-space, they missed the cart, and I offered to make one for their use at home. The picture to the left is not the cart I made, but the one I was making a functional copy of. But I do have a page showing what I made for them.
Then, in 2002, I started on a pair of (different) boxes for Harris and Devlin. Harris’s box was a ladybeetle whose wings were the drawers, while Devlin’s was a puzzle-chest with (apparently) three front sides.