The world is your workshop

Tomorrow is the final day of my eight days of vacation.  I got a lot done -- although (of course!) not as much as I wanted to get done.

One thing that this vacation has reinforced for me is that projects that don't take a lot of person-hours can still take several days -- because every time you glue something, or paint/varnish/oil something -- that's it!  Shift's over!  Time to stop work!


For example:  one of my projects -- which I'll discuss tomorrow -- is two pieces of wood glued together, with two dowels sticking out of the front, and then rubbed down with some finishing oil -- and then screwed to a rack.

But!  Prepping the two pieces of wood so that I could glue them together took maybe half an hour to an hour (I didn't keep track).  Then I glued them -- and that was it for the day!  (On to other tasks...)

The next day I handplaned them (mostly) flat, created two dowels, laid out and drilled the holes, and glued the dowels in -- and that was it for the day.

On day three (today), I oiled them.  OK, end of that segment.

And finally, on day four, I get to actually bolt it to the rack.  Whew!

The other thing I've learned is that, when you're fortunate enough to live where the weather is pretty mild -- that the whole world can be your workshop.  Or, at least your back yard can.

Here you can see three different projects glued and clamped.  My workshop space is pretty small -- and my workbench is (unfortunately) pretty cluttered, so I don't have a lot of room at the moment for bulky things.

Part of the clutter is due to various partially-finished projects -- something I tried, unsuccessfully, to address this vacation


To bring the message full-circle:  my primary project this vacation was the Swamp Guitar (basically a cigar-box guitar).  But because I'd have to keep stopping due to glue-ups, I also worked on a custom tool caddy, and a little bit on the Bretz steps, as well.  Once I actually finish any of these three projects I'll post some photos.

But, about two days ago I realized that there were just too many stages remaining for those three projects, I changed my focus to three fairly quick tasks -- such as the one I described above.


Tomorrow is my final day of vacation, and I post some pics of the projects I **did** finish.   As for the three "main" projects -- well, I'll keep picking away at them, an afternoon or two per weekend.  In among my other duties.  :)


--GG