It's Done

As I've mentioned before, I come from a line (on my mother's side) of carpenters, and sometimes the urge to make something from wood overcomes me, though I'm not sure any of the talent or ability comes along with it. But, I remind myself, they must have made a lot of mistakes while learning their craft. I remember once talking with an uncle (by marriage, not blood) about his work. I mentioned the old adage, "measure twice, cut once." He shook his head. "No, it's measure right and cut."
.
Okay then.

Anyway, I find making things is therapeutic, and certainly pleasantly absorbing. I've made a few bookcases, and even a printer stand. They're all serviceable, but also they were relatively simple to make. Looking around for something else to make, I came across an allegedly easy plan for a media table; simple but more complex than anything I've made thus far, and requiring more work. We needed one for our "family room."

So I set out to make it, a few months back. Without going into boring detail, I can say first of all that because I was using pocket-joints to screw it together, I needed to clamp the sections before proceeding, so the screws would tighten correctly. But my clamps were all too short. I tried all sorts of things, like putting it against a wall or using some concrete blocks to hold it, but that didn't work.

I set it aside for awhile.

Finally, I went out and bought two new clamps: a "pipe clamp," that consists of two separate clamps on a long piece of pipe, and a "band clamp," a long fabric strip that tightens when I turn a handle. Those seemed to work, and as per usual, buying them was a sort of reward to myself -- I try to get something new every time.

Anyhows, the cuts sometimes required precision I still lack, so nothing fit quite like the pictures, and from time to time I made stupid bonehead mistakes, like drilling holes in the wrong end of a piece of wood, and so on. But I soldiered on, making adjustments, and adding supports in places where my misjudgment made for poor joining. From the outside and above it looks like the picture -- but from underneath it looks like a sort of Rube Goldberg contraption. As I studied it I recalled another old carpenter adage, "the wood always wins." It sure did here.

Then I stained it, dark "Early American," since darker stains conceal more errors. And it was done.

It also weighs a lot and I was faced with the problem of getting it off my basement workbench and up a long flight of stairs. The wife is a petite thing, and besides I didn't especially want her to get a good look at the underside or to study the staining too closely.

Today, while she's out of town, I decided to bring it upstairs alone, and have it place before she gets back -- and before she can say, "umm, maybe we should stick with what we have." So I carefully slid it off the bench and got out my "dolly" (a two-wheeled device used to move heavy objects), stood the table on edge, worked it onto the dolly, strapped it in place, and set out to bring it up 13 steps alone. It was not an easy decision to make; I knew that once I started I couldn't change my mind, since I could not easily lower it back down; and also knowing there was a good chance I would lose my balance and plummet back down, to become a news item about an old geezer who should have known better.

Thing is, I did know better, but I also come from a line of "should have known better" people. Like my father, who always insisted on standing at the window or in the doorway when tornado sirens were sounding and every other person was scrambling for cover. His line goes back to the Grahams of Scotland, a clan so contrary and troublesome that the entire bunch were either hanged, imprisoned, or exiled to Ireland.

But I digress. I did get it up the stairs, one thump at a time, with only one brief moment of crisis, which I overcame by sheer determination. Then I moved the former table aside and put this one in place, put everything where it should be, and stood back to study it. I have to say, it doesn't look too bad, if you don't look too close and anyway most of the worst of it is on the back, against the wall, where it can't be seen. A solid piece of workmanship, with the emphasis on "solid."

We'll see what the distaff side thinks when she comes back tomorrow. I think she'll be happy with it, or at least accepting.

I do know two things. One, I'm not moving it back downstairs alone. I'd rather chop it up for firewood.

And two, in my gut I feel pretty good about it, I set out to build something useful, and I succeeded. I made mistakes but I learned from them. And when I was working on it, nothing else mattered. Sort of like on a writing project, it absorbed my attention in a good way.

I was in the flow. I like it there.