Make, Do, Mend

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Today, in the service of my router lift project, I decided to dust off my dad's old drawing board, which I've had, alongside his lathe and sundry other tools, since he died. Pictured is the thing atop my table-saw/general-purpose support surface, along with the tee-square gifted me by Mrs. Abrahams when I was about to start Technical School at the age of eleven [mentioned blog post passim]. It's astounding that the colour of the old man's board exactly matches the venerable old ruling instrument - which by now must be a good seventy years or more old - as neither of them have ever been used together until today. More, and I might say welcome, synchronicity.

One might ask, why use drawing instruments from a bygone era to map out an intended physical build, when CAD tools are readily available for the various computing/mobile devices in my possession? I guess two things. I have never really got on with CAD software: none of the stuff ever seemed particularly intuitive to use to me; and trust me, I've over thirty years experience with software design and compositing tools from the very earliest days. Secondly, I don't possess any CNC tools or accurate 2D, let alone 3D printers, so directly outputting my design to an automated machine is not an issue. Oh, and thirdly - no one expects the Spanish Inquisition - I'm just bloody-minded, and anyhow, I can make stuff without all that, well, stuff.

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