Woodworking workbench thought

Continuing to work on the baby gate for the top of my parents' stairs. Short-term, I've clamped a sheet of chipboard across the top. Un-elegant, but it seems to work. Comes up to the kidlets' armpits.

The biggest danger of baby gates is that the adult get lazy and step over them, rather than opening them. Thus, the adults trip and fall on their face, and/or down the stairs. Thus, I've designed the baby gate that my brother and I are building to be as easy to open and shut as possible.

Building it from available wood scraps, and with limited tools, to there are a **lot** of small and medium-sized pieces getting connected. Worked on it for part of this evening: have the bottom, and one side, done. Need to make the other side, and the gate itself (which will just be a single piece of plywood, I think). Brother went home to Seattle, so today's progress was just by me.

At my brother's suggestion, dry-assembling as I go with screws. Will do the final sanding and glueing once I'm sure the entire project fits. Fitting the pieces to the whole (and to the stairway), as the house isn't quite square or true.

I'm doing most of the actual working on the baby gate downstairs in the garage, with a number of overturned cardboard boxes to serve as tool- and parts-resting surfaces. More ergonomic than reaching down to the floor (i.e. keeping everything on the floor), and resting things on the bottoms of the boxes keeps things more ''clustered'', thus organized.

Been ''hanging'' the screwdrivers, the awl (for starting drill holes), and the eggbeater drill along the long slot along the center of Dad's folding sawhorse. The groove/slot along the length of that sawhorse keeps them from rolling onto the floor, and they're at a good working height for grabbing.

Some woodworking workbenches have a ''tool tray'' along the back -- usually about 4'' deep, 8'' wide, and the length of the workbench. Don't think i'll build one in (some people think they get messy, and just collect sawdust and shavings), but I **do** think I'll make some sort of ''tool groove'' that runs the length: something deep enough for a screwdriver or chisel handle, such that if I'm sliding around a piece, it'll pass over the handles of the tools I'm keeping in the groove. Would keep the desired size of tools for the project close by (as opposed to back in the rack, confusingly among the others), and keep them from rolling onto the floor. But not so big as to invite clutter.


--GG