Unexpected Time Off

We had a bit of a storm here yesterday.

That’s 19″ of snow in my backyard. As a good resident, I got up really early and shoveled my and my neighbors’ sidewalks. But then realized that few other people had shoveled and my street had yet to be plowed. So I made the executive decision to not schlep to the bus stop (which would also have a lot of snow) to wait for one of the two buses that would take me to work.

Instead it’s back to work on my wood. I thought I’d give a little overview of the process I follow. I have a big pile of wood that looks just like this.

I basically bring in about five armloads of lathe. I then trim both sides to give me a nice clean cut on the ends and roughly sort the boards into four piles by size. This lets me look at the boards a bit more closely and to throw out any that are in awful shape.

This picture shows my sorted piles as I started sanding. The furthest pile away has already been sanded.

Here all the piles of wood have been sanded. It probably took me a couple of hours to do all the pieces. It’s not too hard, though my arms do get a bit tired. However, it is very loud and pretty dusty. So I wear a mask, googles and hearing protection while doing this.

Then, I just start gluing pieces together. Here’s probably the widest board I’m making.

The last steps on this board will be to trim the sides and then plane it until it’s smooth. This sounds easy, but it’s not quick. It’ll take a number of runs through my planer to get it done.