Sawdust Memories

I came late to the hobby of woodworking, and I’m terrible at it. Like many people, I suppose, I took up a new pastime during the COVID-19 lockdowns. In my case, it was working wood. I use both power tools and hand tools: power tools for the big cuts and rough shaping, and handtools for the fiddly details.

It’s fun, and I generally find it relaxing. Unfortunately, starting the study of a new craft in middle age when you have never had much in the way of experience with it can be a torture to a person who is by nature a perfectionist.

And there can be no perfection when you’re first learning a craft.

My hands don’t move the way I want them to, the tools can be persnickety, and wood – while a most forgiving medium – hardly ever behaves the way I expect it to.

In short, I make a lot of mistakes, which is only to be expected, but I lack the skill and experience to recover smoothly from many of those mistakes. So I end up spending an inordinate amount of time staring at things and trying to figure out how to make them work. 

As an example, I have been working on the skirts for my workbench, and I can’t seem to make them work. This should be, at most, a couple of hours work. But no matter how many times I measure, or how carefully I cut or router, the stupid things absolutely refused to fit with the bench top and the legs.

I started this morning with a very clear idea of how to fix it. I even still think it might work, but I have been singularly unsuccessful so far in actually cutting anything to the proper measurements.

So I’ve set it aside until tomorrow.

Also, our delightful little bunny Alice died last night, and I am unexpectedly sad about this. Which is, of course, the entire point of this post.