Coming Home
Hello! How to begin? There’s a lot going on behind the scenes here, and I wanted to share some of the good news, and what’s going on.
This pandemic has been hard. So hard. I’ve shared this before, but the first many months Ashley, my partner, was pregnant - we found out right as the first lockdown started, and the school I was going to, that was my woodworking shop space, closed. I was super grateful to secure some space in town that I could use, but to be honest, I didn’t go in very much - I slowly worked on my timber framed workbench over three or four months, when I was able to slip away, always feeling like I was going to bring home a virus. It was only a matter of time before the shop was closed due to a false positive COVID test that required me to self isolate, away from the shop.
Our lease was up in the summertime so much of that was spent moving in, and renovating the new house. We really called in a great one - we weren’t able to see it until the last second, but it’s more than perfect. It’s a good sized house with a garage that backs up to a redwood forest ravine carved by a creek and protected as a state park. It has a (not so little) cabin in the back that we renovated for Ash’s work studio, and it’s quite beautiful, with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the forest ravine. We weren’t even looking for a garage, but it came with one, and it’s pretty wonderful.
I self isolated at our new home at first, finishing up the Ofuro and sending it to Germany, and spent the next bit getting our house in order. I want to make it a beautiful place to live, and, naturally, take a few pictures of the furniture I make in it.
In the process, which took a couple months of mulling over, I decided to bite the bullet and invest in my own tools, and my own shop. This way I can keep myself and Ashley safe, which is difficult in a shared space with shared machines - be it a shared workshop, a job, a school, or anything, as we are all learning. This second wave seems to be pretty real.
It also means I can hone in on exactly the machines that I need for my work. Not everyone needs a giant drill press with a huge throw and a two axis bed. But I also don’t use giant drum sanders a lot either. It’s going to be fun putting it all together an making what I make - which, experiments aside, is solid wood, made with care and sustainably, but also like things you haven’t seen before. Making bathtubs as well as chairs is interesting.
If you’ve been following me for a long time you’ll know I started woodworking almost entirely with hand tools. I didn’t start this way - I bought whatever the box home store by me had at first, and tried them out on the deck of my apartment, before hating the process and finding something that was in tune with my nature. Now that I’ve worked in a couple other machine shops, though, I see how to do it right. Now I have proper dust collection, now I’m very lucky to get a Festool version of something rather than the cheapest crappy one on sale that day was. I don’t plan on making this a machine shop blog, but I’m sure some others could learn from my experience and I have fun sharing. So expect a bit of that as I set up shop and get back to projects. I also paid for everything myself, with no sponsorships, and I also make no claim to be an objective tool reviewer. I know what I like and what I’ve used, but that’s about where it ends.
Yesterday I tried out my new Festool track saw, jigsaw, a stationary disk/belt sander combo and a hydraulic nail gun as a sort of ‘rapid protoyping’ setup. The dust collection alone is astounding on these machines, which is really important to me at a home shop. I always had a shop in a separate outbuilding, but now that I share the space with the laundry machine and a door into our home, and doing this professionally, I want to be extra careful.
They cut straight, true, easily - I’m so happy. The track saw alone will really come in handy for the big slabs I’m about the do. The sander let me take the splintery edge off the cheap plywood in no time, and round up the edges. The 18 pt brad nailer put it all together. I haven’t really used any kind of nail gun before, so I wanted to see what it was capable of. I really like that 18 pt brads, and how tiny they are, but they aren’t structural. But for help holding things in place here or there while I glue things up, or make small boxes and drawers and shop jigs, this will be a real time saver. Plus, with compressed air now I can blow out the dust from the shop, air up the tires in my car, and down the road get a vacuum bag for veneering. This Rolair is pretty quiet, which is also nice with a home shop. Today I’m going to try and put together a big Delta drill press, but I’ll probably need help getting the head unit on the stalk.
I tried it all out making a quick mockup of a Samhain altar. It’s put together more like we would do set pieces for theatre - it looks ok from a distance, but is more the suggestion of shape than anything that would be considered real furniture. I learned at the Krenov school not just how to do this but how important of a step it is in the design process, and I’m so happy I can at home now.
Overall, a lot to be really excited about - this is my shop, and I’m building it to last a lifetime. I’ve got more, from neckerchief slides, small stools and plant stands, wall cabinets and shelves, standing desks, lamps, spa benches, and a couple massive dining tables all lined up to make and release soon, along with some really fun carved totems.
That’s enough for today, but having my own shop means I’m going to be able to film more, photograph more, and write about more of what I’m doing, so there are benefits all around. I’m just grateful that right now I’m able.
