Progress. I'm in favour of it.

  So I've finally gotten things together and made progress on my home shop.  Any and all things not inherent to the structure of the building have been removed.  This includes spiders.  (They were not happy.)  The plan was to dig down about 4 inches plus some more around the edges for drain pipes and fill.  Then some plastic and styrofoam and 5 inches of concrete.  The garage door also needed to be removed and reinstalled correctly.  I had a contractor do that part.  I feel vaguely guilty about it, but only in the most fleeting of moments.  I just don't have the time for it.  The contractor brought in ten guys and knocked the whole thing out in a day.  It was glorious.  I waited a few days and then laid some 3/4" plywood down over it.  Then I set about putting down some flooring.  I went out to Windhorse Farm and asked them for the cheapest offcuts from their flooring business.  I don't believe in ugly wood and I don't mind short floorboards.  Besides, 14' quartersawn white oak just isn't in my budget.  I also chopped up some ash offcuts from my job to make an endgrain ash border.  I caught a little flack from the other guys at my job for trying to make a 'pretty' shop floor, but what the heck, I ran with it.  Inside the border I thought I'd lay the boards diagonally.  It's a bunch of random widths of knotty pine and hackmatack.  Just the stuff for a South Shore shop.  If it was a commercial space I'd prefer hardwood, but for a homeshop the soft stuff will do just fine.

I almost don't want to fill it up with stuff.

 I needed to make a cheap workbench to build everything on.  The problem is always that it helps to have a workbench when you're making a workbench.

I have a fairly serious love/hate relationship with air nailers.  For one thing, they're just so darned convenient.  On the other hand, they're noisy and I keep getting tangled up in the hose.  I never seem to have the right size nail at hand and it's kind of pricey when you add up everything.  (I have a large compressor at the shop, two small compressors to travel, 4 different gauge nailers, a stapler, and various other attachments.  However, there are times when a die grinder will save your sanity.)




From the doorway it looks like I'm done.

But no, I'm just part of the way there.  I told my wife that work would go so much better if it was like a movie montage.  Just a few cut frames of the floor coming together and me looking quizzically at the nailer, or stubbing my thumb, and then bam, it's done and I'm drinking beer.  However, it's going fast enough, so I can't complain.  Well I can, but it won't be valid.  Once I finish this up I'll do a bit of sanding and coating and I can move in.  Wait until you see the old vise I picked up in Maine for next to nothing.  It's a brute.

This is not a tiger. Trust me.

Just recently my wise and beautiful fiancé bought me a camera.  She may ultimately regret this.  Having only used an iPhone camera before, I was, quite frankly, stunned at the results.  Even without any discernible aptitude I was able to take some pretty great photos with it.  I'm currently learning how to work the multitude of buttons.  It's a Canon T3i with a couple of lenses.  I'm taking RAW images and messing about with them in Adobe Lightroom.  Meet Alley, one of our two cats.  She's my test subject.

I was hiding around the corner taking pictures of her as she stalked some dandelions.  The weather is just becoming very pleasant here and the cats (and the people) are thrilled to be outside again.  They think they're tigers in the tall grass (the cats, not the people).  My fiancé is poking and prodding the plants and murdering the weeds with bloodthirsty zeal.  I'm wandering around the yard enjoying life through a viewfinder.  This camera is very complex.  Or, at least, it can be.  It is also user-friendly and rather automatic, when you let it.  Until I acquire the skills to use it effectively I will just use the automatic setting.  It's fascinating to me how the autofocus works.  I know it's old hat to most people these days, but it still seems so amazing to me.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  -Arthur C. Clarke

Having this camera has caused an irrepressible urge to photo document  everything in my life.  It's going to be difficult to limit myself.  The initial idea behind this blog was to create a forum for sharing my process of creating a workshop here at home and then to move on into my woodworking projects.  But as I start to actually do it I see that this is going to be about creating a life.  A life here in Lunenburg, a life with my fiancé, who will be my wife in a month's time, and a household.  A homestead. The clinical process of work becomes the organic process of existence.  It's a fallacy to think I could separate the two.  Or that I would want to.

So I'm just going to write.  About anything at all, since I believe I'll find my focus as I go.  I'll take some pictures.  Cut some dovetails.  Enjoy this town.  You know, stuff.  We'll see how it goes.  Good night.

In the Beginning there was the word. The word 'Shed'.

In the beginning there was a shed.  It had a dirt floor and no insulation.  There was a rather flimsy garage door that had to be raised by hand.  It had much random stuff in it.  Stuff like a backseat for a Jeep, some old lawn furniture, a cheap reproduction of a Chinese foo dog.  (I know it's not called a foo dog, but I like the name, so there.)  There were many, many pots of plastic and more than a few of clay.  There were some rusty garden tools and some cheap power tools.  Perhaps some spiders.  And it was all mine!

It should probably be noted that the scary, pale things in the lower right corner are actually chives that haven't seen the light of day.  So, ghost chives. The marketing possibilities occupied my mind for a good 30 seconds.  

The foo dog may stay.  I like him.  Everything else must go.  This shed is to become my workshop.  My sanctuary.  Where I retreat from modern life into the realm of wood and hand tools.  (I wonder if the wifi reaches out here?)  First I am putting down a concrete floor.  Then I'll run some wires of manly voltage out to power some lights, some music, possibly a power tool or two.  (Okay, I'll hire someone to run the 220 to the box, I don't know a darn thing about the housing code.)  Next comes the workbench, of a Roubo vintage.  But first I have to get rid of all this junk.  [Sigh]