working with wood

While at my parents' house for Christmas, I decided I needed to make a kiddie gate, to keep my kid (and the two other visiting kids) from falling down my parents' slate staircase. I'll discuss the actual gate in a forthcoming blog entry.

This was my first ''big'' woodworking project in years, so it gave me a sense of my working style. And the hands-on experience was pretty relevant to what I'll be doing during the period between When I Finish My Dissertation (TM) and when I can build an actual workshop out back (after the house gets built). My thought is that I'd have a simple workbench out back, under a tarp or thirty-dollar gazebo, but bring all my tools out for the day's work -- otherwise, I'd keep them inside, where they're less theft-able.

Here's a picture of my general set-up. My parents have a two-car garage, so depending on which car was out when I started my day's (or evening's) work, I'd set up shop in either of the two car bays. At the end of my shift, some tools -- mostly the smaller ones -- would go into a cardboard box, while the larger ones (such as the handsaw) would be hung back up on the wall.


As you can see, there wasn't a dedicated work surface. Clamped things to the larger sawhorse (in the foreground) and then cut to length. Assembly of the project occurred bit-by-bit on the ground (apparently, very Japanese/Southeast Asian woodworker to use the ground). Drilling also occurred primarily on the ground, with ends of the project blocked up on bits of scrap wood to make it level.

To make things somewhat more ergonomic, I placed the tools, the jars o' screws, and the small bits o' wood on the bottoms of overturned cardboard boxes. This meant I didn't have as far to bend over when I was reaching for something. It also kept things a bit more clustered -- and thus, tidy. Keeping things on their little pedestals let me group things, and minimized the ''smear'' or ''spread,'' thus minimizing their underfootedness.

I also put the electric drill (the only piece of non-handtool I used) on a box, rather than balancing it on the sawhorse. Figured it gave it less far to fall, should it get knocked.


The below photos shows me turning a liability into an asset. The two sawhorses are not of equal height, which limits the ability of laying a long board across both. And the of the second sawhorse is pretty narrow. However, because my dad designed it to be folding, it has a groove running down its center. I thus took to using the slot as a holder, for the screwdrivers and awl (shown below), as well (later on) for the handsaw and chisel. On the far right end is the red and blue ''eggbeater''-style hand drill. I got tired of changing back and forth between the twist bits and the countersink bit in the electric drill, so I dedicated the eggbeater drill to the countersink bit. Worked really well.


From all this, I've decided that when working in my ''temporary/transitional'' setup under the tarp, I'll make a sawhorse just above knee height, possibly with a one-inch (3cm) slit down the center for ripsawing. And I'll make a caddy, with a footprint about the size of a computer keyboard, with maybe two slots, for various dangle-able tools. The caddy will (hopefully!) allow me to ferry the relevant bundle of tools in and out, with a minimum of bother.


--GG