Spiritual wood connection

Doing the long, all-night, no-sleep, marathon crate-buildings session my brother and I held in my grandpa's basement workshop was not a lot of fun.

At the same time, it was the first time that I had attempted to build a wooden shipping crate -- let alone a production run of that quanity and variety (five total; sofa-sized; headboard-sized; footlocker-sized).

And, there was some good brotherly bonding, as my younger brother and I cranked through the making of the crates. He has more powertool experience than I do, so intially I created the cut list; he cut the plywood and framing; and we both assembled. (I held the pieces, as he has a steadier hand on the screw-driving drill bit.) Later, when I allowed him to sleep (2am-7am, IIRC -- as I continued to use a circular saw while lacking sleep; potentially foolish, but no accidents resulted), I did the whole deal myself. Then, when he woke up, he joined back in until the truck showed up around 10am.

And, even though I'd bought my own stash of plywood and dimensional lumber, we ended up supplementing it with my grandpa's stash of leftovers. In part because I under-estimated the quantity I'd need, but also because lumber is expensive in Aussie-land (mostly desert, so lumber is largely imported) -- so some of the crates have some nice, cabinet-grade plywood facing the interior! I'll dismantle (used screws, not nails), and re-use.

And there was something -- spiritual -- about using my grandpa's work area, and some of his leftover tools, to make things out of wood... to haul away things from his house. His interaction style is such that it's hard to work collaboratively with him -- specifically, it's hard to ''discuss'', or have a ''give and take'' exchange -- although I'd had two or three attempts over the last few years. So this was possibly as close as I could come to a collaborative wood-using experience.

At least, that's the feeling I had, about about 5am in the morning, in my harried, sleep-deprived state.


--GG