You should read this book

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work by Matthew Crawford. The work referred to in the title is manual work- physically manipulating objects to create or repair. He explores the intellectual demands of manual work and explains just how much more mentally invigorating it can be than "knowledge work." It made me want to get my hands dirty, but also made me reconsider the value of college vs. vocational/technical training. Pick up a copy. Better yet, check it out from the library. Warning: There is some salty language, and you may need a dictionary to decode some passages. The author's vocabulary is extensive.

The best dictionary in the world

At least one of them. The Oxford English Dictionary. I got one at the second-hand bookstore for $100. And you didn't. Sorry.

This is the compact edition, where they put four pages on one page. And yes, it is a lousy picture. This was on my old camera.

The awesome door gets cut in half.

Remember the awesome door for a bench? Well, it has been sanded and stripped a little more. Here is a picture of my poor man's table saw, as I ripped it straight down the middle. Clamping a straight piece and then using my Skilsaw worked just fine.

Things I have made, part 3

Isn't this just the cutest little chair you ever did see? Here it is when I made it.

And here it is today, working hard on the bookshelf, where it is a fulltime bookend/shelf support.

I just made it out of cheap pine. Cut it out on the scroll saw, put it together with glue and brads.

Now for some words - a poem by me.

I'm very glad
There is no hell
Set aside for those
That cannot spell.

Things I have made, part 2: Wood rocks!

Or, more correctly in this context, wooden rocks rock.

So, Laughter's spoons below may be cool, but they take a LOT of work. These don't.

I got the idea to make wooden rocks from some pictures I saw on the internet - hardwood chunks, cut and sanded into faceted shapes suitable for stacking. So I made some. I had three kinds of wood to work with - apricot, from some trees in our side yard that didn't make it; cypress, from the front yard; and sycamore, from the back yard. After making faceted shapes and playing with them (I let the kids play with them too), I decided to round some off to look more like river rocks.

These are made from apricot and finished with polyurethane.



After I finished those and made the little basket thingy, I thought they would look better in a clear bowl. So see below:



These are sanded but not finished. The lighter colored pieces are cypress. They smell great, but the pitch in the center makes them impossible to polyurethane. I have done a few with wax, and that works well.

Here is another view of the same pile:

The advantages of making wooden rocks:

1) You only need a band saw and a disc sander. Or a belt sander.

2) You don't have to follow any pattern.

The disadvantage:

You may become preoccupied with wood and finding time to sand. At least I did. They were like crack. Or chocolate.

By the light of the silvery moon...

Wooden spoons are a great little project, especially if you have more desire to do something than time or space to do it. These are a batch of spoons I made for Christmas a couple years back. They are made of Walnut, Cherry, Maple, Poplar, and a couple from Ash.

Thoughts on materials: I made all of these out of 3/4 inch thick lumber. Maple is by far the best. It is hard to carve, but the tight smooth grain gives the best finish and the utensils don't get dinged up as fast. Cherry and Walnut both made some nice looking spoons. They are softer than the Maple, so the work went a lot faster, but they do ding up faster. Poplar is the least expensive choice. It is also pretty soft, but has a nice smooth, tight grain. It works fast and looks okay at the end. I tried Ash just because I had some. I won't waste my time with it again. Hard, brittle, splinters like crazy, and huge open grain. Good for baseball bats, not good for spoons.

Tools- The first few spoons I made with nothing more than a pocketknife and sandpaper. It was slow going. When I decided to make a bunch, I bought a carving gouge and a set of swedish carving knives. I have not used the pocket knife since. I cut out all the blanks with a coping saw.

The best part of the project was giving them away, but I had a lot of satisfaction sitting in front of the TV with a box to catch wood chips and just whittling away (include vacuum cleaner on your tools list if doing this).

Things I have made, part 1

This is a menorah I made for a friend at work. I used aromatic cedar and I cut it out on my scroll saw. The design was inspired by several items of Judaica and is meant to evoke the Jerusalem skyline of centuries past. I think it turned out quite nice. The holes for the candles are drilled on top and you can't see them in this picture.

Women Named in the Book of Mormon

Six women are mentioned by name in the Book of Mormon. They are Eve, Mary, Sarah, Sariah, Abish, and Isabel. A seventh, Rahab, is not mentioned as a person, but figuratively in a quotation of Isaiah (2 Nephi 8:9 – “Art thou not he that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?”).
Why so few women mentioned by name? I don’t know. But if you count the names in the Pronouncing Guide (343), subtract the seven women’s names, the place names, and the other names, you find 206 names remaining. By going through the list and listing those that are readily recognizable as either good guys or bad guys, I come up with 32 percent bad guys and 68 percent good guys. The percentages are much different for the women. Five of the six (or six of the seven) are righteous, giving us 83 (or 86) percent of the women as righteous.
Does this mean anything? I doubt it.

Awesome door for a bench

This is a door. I got it at a store that sells salvaged construction materials. I plan on making a bench out of it. This picture was taken after I sanded the thick brown paint off of the flat parts. The carved panels required a bit more work with stripper and brushes and steel wool.