New, Old Skills

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The Old Man's Carpentry Manual - As old as me...

 

 

Spent today working on the frame for the cottage kitchen surface. This has seen me dragging skills out of the deepest recesses of memory; skills that I had hitherto abandoned as just too bloody difficult to get even vaguely, let alone master practically. But the ghost of the old man is always on hand to advise and I'm now listening rather more intently than I did as a youth.

 I decided that I would try and do justice to the beech top by at least attempting to build its subframe and cupboard properly, by which I mean using actual jointing techniques. Cutting housing and dado joints is not my normal fare, but since this Covid bollocks kicked in and with my recent retirement in the bag, I decided last March that I would start making an effort, albeit a little late in life; viz this blog and the desire to start making stuff to a reasonable standard: maybe good enough to start a small online business in wood and brass curiosities.

My dad always tried to impress on me the need for decent tools if you want to do a decent job of something, so I've spent the last few years acquiring various pieces of kit of varying degrees of quality and cost, some of which have stood me in good stead for most of the DIY I turn my hand to; but the one thing I never got around to buying for whatever reason, was a tenon saw, instead relying on power saws for cross-cutting stock timber.

Whilst the mitre/chop saw has seen a lot of service over the last ten years, my recently acquired actual, hand tenon saw is an absolute bloody revelation. With a home-made bench hook and a decent mitre box, I can actually cut wood to a degree of accuracy that has frankly astounded me. Reasonable joints, even in crappy kiln-dried softwoods are now becoming a reality for me.

One thing I don't possess is a carpenter's vice of any sort, so I'm looking for traditional solutions like bench-dogs, holdfasts and other such alternatives for holding work pieces in place. A key parameter now is not spending too much money, at least until I can get the cottage running and an online business or two turning over so I can invest in stuff; and for this I will definitely be channeling the old man. He was a master of improvising, and making tools that he didn't possess and either couldn't afford or didn't see the point of paying someone else for. I look forward to the rest of my retirement with considerable optimism.

Comments

  1. Phil.12 November 2020 at 20:31

    I find myself agreeing yet again Kel.

    There is a basic human impulse - the hankering to do a job well for its own sake. This gets completely and utterly lost in the modern workplace. Jobs today are done to earn the money, earn the bonus, fill the timesheet out.

    I always wonder why people can’t just be paid a fair wage and then do a quality job? Why do you need a bonus to a job well?

    The only real way to find agency and competence, in anything, is to do a quality job. This means making mistakes, and taking your time, sometimes a great deal of it. This applies equally to woodwork, blog writing, cleaning the car, cooking a meal - anything in fact. When you leave the world of paid work you realise that time isn’t money, it’s quality and craftsmanship; and those two are very different things.

    When I was in paid work, I found myself continually rushing to meet deadlines, with a subsequent decline in quality and satisfaction. There is no satisfaction at all in a poor quality job. I don’t rush anything much nowadays - and it feels very good indeed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. sideways12 November 2020 at 21:12

    Well said, sir! - the one thing that hit me hardest when I was forced by circumstance to enter the corporate environment was the overarching performance management ethos that cared little for what was actually achieved at the coal face as long as the [usually spurious] figures were met and the managers got their bonuses. When I first started with BT, there was a workforce bonus scheme in place, which was shelved when it was deemed corrupted by bad practice; the managers' bonus scheme is still there: I remember one of my managers having the gall to say he didn't see why an engineer should be paid extra for just doing what he/she was paid for already. Didn't stop him from raking in his ex gratia, though... Looking forward to working for myself again - it's been too long out there in bullshit-land... Cheers Phil!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Joe Stoner13 November 2020 at 11:34

    You can borrow my woodworking vice Kel. I'll need it back when I build a bench like my father's which was made out of South American Box Wood that he got from a packing case from Beagle Aviation (his last employers). It had the simple device of the central plank being half or threequaters of an inch lower than the front and back planks. This made planing and chisel work a piece of piss, doubt that I'll find any of that wood available but I've got my eyes on some Ash round the back of my place! I'd LOVE some of the Beech wood just rotting on the banks of the Ogwen but that'd require a chainsaw and my son's have made short-work of any that I've acquired!!! Oh I forgot to mention that you'll have to help me dig the vice out from my garden "shed" where the bench that I fitted it to has given-up-the-ghost under the mountains of shit that my family decided was the proper function of a rather "rustic" work bench!!:):)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. sideways13 November 2020 at 17:33

      We'll have to start digging, then ;0) - cheers, Joe...

      Delete
    2. Joe Stoner15 November 2020 at 11:51

      It'll have to be a dry day cos I haven't cut back the honeysuckle that the Wrens were nesting in this year. Tuesday's a 20+% chance of rain but Friday's straight 20% chance of rain. As good as it gets up here in the "Pointy Bits" mate!!

      Delete

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