Provide Your Own Dirty Puns

Gratuitous photos of me operating the wide-belt sander. Good exercise for the shoulders, in fact!

Load the wood in . . . 

Guide the wood out . . . 

 Do you love my gloves? They're simultaneously butch and prissy.

I Lathe You

I finished turning my first table leg last night. Like several other skills and techniques I have learned in the wood shop, this one is not at all transferable to my later life. But, lathing is rather therapeutic. Unlike other stations in the shop, lathing does not permit one to help others loading their boards into and out of the planer or table saw. It requires a very near focus, specifically on the visible edge of your working piece. Slow, gentle, and repetitive movements are required to avoid introducing flaws. And, it only involves one round of sweeping (vacuuming, even!) at the end of the night.

Like the wide belt sander, it is apparently magical. It transforms one ugly, ungainly wood product into something you might actually buy, or at least bring into the house. Unlike the wide belt sander, the lathe requires a lot of participation from the operator. Oh, and it's a bit dangerous!

While experimenting with the skew chisel, I jammed it into the line where two boards are glued together, and a two-inch chunk of wood flew into my face and impaled my cheek. Now, that sounds much gorier than it really was. It did stick into my face. I did have to pull it out. But, the damage was only three tiny cuts. From the evidence that remains, you'd never guess what happened.

But without further ado: here is my first table leg, along with a reminder of its improbable origins!

16 boards, glued together in stacks of four, and clamped overnight.

Drumroll please . . .

The octagonal chunk at the bottom will be sawed off.
The octagonal chunk at the top stays in place,
and affixes the leg to the table beneath the "skirt."

It was hard to design this piece for several reasons. One reason is that the instructor had me build my legs out of four pieces of 2x6 glued together, which makes them much more massive than ordinary legs. In fact, all the other students in the class are using three pieces of 2x6 lumber glued together. Another reason it was difficult is that I didn't want to go for a lot of ornament, certainly not a lot of "country kitchen" style knobs and spools. No other table in our house has turned legs, and certainly not ornate legs.

So, in order to keep things streamlined, modern, and fine, I decided on a design inspired by my puppy's hind legs, which I find very elegant. Springy, strong, and delicate all at once, with pretty and proper little toes. See?

Not exactly illustrative, but darn cute!

The socialization level is through the roof tonight. Could this class be . . . fun???

Clip: Bored

The past two weeks have revealed that the hundreds of half-empty boxes of nails and bottles of glue are not the extent of disorganization in the workshop. With some 19 students remaining in the class, there are numerous projects happening, all along the same approximate timeline. This has created serious bottlenecks, first for the jointer, then the planer, then the table saw, then the clamps and work benches. For the past four sessions, I have spent far more time waiting for machines - and helping others move their lumber around the crowded, cluttered room - than working on my project.

Now, this problem is more frustrating than harmful. We have until Thanksgiving to finish these projects, and once the wood is machined, the assembly should be relatively straightforward. (How long does it take you, after all, to put together an Ikea table?) Meanwhile, my Monday and Wednesday nights alternate between rushed minutes of wood handling, and long hours of tedium.

Got Legs

You are gonna be surprised when you find out how table legs are actually made. Here are your first clues:

The Desktop of the Future

Surprisingly compact, but sparing nothing in functionality and features!

From such humble origins! There is nothing* that can't be made out of construction lumber with heavy machinery and elbow grease.

A desk foreshadowed. But, that big gap proves the jointer isn't magic. There will be work. Work work work.

 Click through to see last night's progress!

I'm not gonna be modest: sawdust is, like +10,000 in hotness.

" Two hours into class, and I have jointed one board face and one board edge. The problem isn't lack of equipment, it's lack of organization. Things will be different when I take over!

Stop Being Polite

Remember when The Real World emerged back in the early 90s? A "soap opera" with no script, no actors, no story - just life. An idea so crazy it just might work! And, the "sell" (Stop being polite and start being real) may be the phrase that gave "reality" TV its now-ironic name.

That phrase has been in my mind this week, characterizing as it does two things: First, a jumble of people with no plot but their own lives in media res. Second, the end of preparation time and the beginning of the main event.


In class, we had our first tests. We had to identify 10 parts of a jointer, 8 parts of a planer and 13 parts of a table saw. It was scary! We adults are not often on the spot to quickly answer questions in an area far outside our expertise.


It was also illuminating (at least entertaining) to watch my classmates various approaches to the tests. Being back in school, as I've noted before, is like being an anthropologist studying your own past. The Ivy League baseball player was deliberate and unhurried, and intentionally turned his paper in last, in case one last correction should come to mind. The medical resident declined to take it at all until she had a chance to review the material and practice all over. The 19-year-old construction worker showed up 20 minutes late and rushed through it, then cheated. (Not that it matters, after all. This is continuing education, not the bar exam!)


I've never been in a group - through school or work or anything else - with such diversity. Not even MTV could come up with such a diverse and incompatible mix. I guess power tools are the great bond of humankind.


On Wednesday, I used the miter saw for the first time. I chopped the hell out of some 2x6's. (Sorry I failed to take pictures of my first work outputs.) I watched a demonstration of constructing table legs. I haven't reached the point where I honestly believe all this lumber going to turn into a piece of furniture, but I had better get faith soon, or all the money I spent at Lowe's is down the drain.


Michael and I also closed on our first house this week. On the one hand I keep thinking, "How did we end up here?!" Not just here, Durham, geographically - though that itself is a trick of fate. But here in our lives, two people with no biographical intersection before the day we met. What we share through coincidence and co-creation is awesome and improbable. Is this some kind of cosmic experiment? or joke? or mistake? Here we are, getting real!


And all our fantasies about a domestic life and becoming a family are crashing to earth in an alarming cascade of reality checks and good-enough compromises. If we want wainscoting, we are going to have to order it! Stair treads! Countertops! What's the budget for upstairs flooring? Appliances? Tuition? Family vacations?


The "reality" that New York City promised to the first housemates of The Real World was a condition of unmediated responsibility and risk. Everybody in carpentry class has a similar drive - to be free from paying contractors to build your shed, free from spending your life in front of a computer screen, free to get it all wrong, cut off your finger, and waste your own money. And, rounding out this three-way comparison, owning a home is all about a risky freedom, too - freedom to paint the walls a crazy color (or knock them down!) and win or lose when it comes time to sell. The process of getting a mortgage is very much a weeks-long test of one's maturity and capacity to handle all this freedom.


This weekend we'll be moving, and we have a team of parents, siblings, and friends to help. This is going to be a true story... of nine people.. tapped to box up our house ...work together and have their lives disrupted... and we are definitely going to find out what happens... when people stop being polite... and start getting real!