![]() “I didn’t lose my best friend, Fred, but I’m losing my shirt … and maybe my marriage too.” Freddie grabbed his plate of half eaten heart attack, chicken fried steak, greasy potatoes, side of four eggs and made himself at home beside Tom. Techno didn’t even look up, just kept stirring that coffee he was apparently never going to drink, maybe just let it congeal to a cold pudding. “You seem a little down in the mouth, amigo,” he said. Freddie Fairlane, one table over with the other Flatheads, the vintage car guyz, watched for awhile then moseyed over to sit at Tom’s table. Techno Tom was morosely stirring half a pint of sugar into his coffee, no doubt figuring the sugar blast would quadruple the jolt from the Diner’s caffeine. Hits: 2 Tags: Woodworking for the Slothful, Woodworking vs. But they do look nice hanging on the wall…. Although, I have a couple of guitars that convinced me that might not always be true. There is no satisfaction like doing it yourself. What I think, and what I want to convey, is that you don’t need to be a professional woodworker to build your own stuff. And a small sense of accomplishment … despite the limitations of my woodworking skills. There’s a joy in watching plain sanded wood come to life as the Danish seeps in and gives it color and depth. Yesterday I put the final shelves on the bookcase and oiled the entire hutch. Plus, think about a framework of so many pieces of laminate and imagine nice finish work in those hard to reach spaces. Me, I quit at 220, figuring further sanding would be wasted on my finish techniques. A real woodworker would have taken it to 350 to 400 and even to 600 grit. There was lots of sanding, 60 grit to 100 to 150 and on and on. Clamps by the dozens squeezed glue out of joints that had to be cleaned up when it dried. ![]() A ton of glue went into this hutch, let me tell you. The shelves, since I’d laminated everything in the bodies of both, got made from strips of maple and walnut and some left over bubinga from the guitars. This, though, I wanted a lower cabinet and an upper bookcase with shelves, the bookcase resting on top of the bottom, slightly narrower. I have 5 acoustic guitars I could show you that would illustrate both. ![]() Naturally I didn’t have a finished design in mind, just figured I’d build it piece by piece and hope for the best. My goal was to create a sort of intricate ghost cabinet, bones but no skin, everything visible. Lots of them, enough to make a skeleton framework, no plywood carcass, no plywood back, no doors in the lower cabinet. What I did was, first off, laminate these narrow strips of wood I had laying around the shop, maple and walnut lengths until I had a pretty sizeable pile of 2×3 lengths, some with a maple strip in the middle, some the reverse. I am, if not a woodworker, supposedly an artist. But naturally I wasn’t going to duplicate the old one in miniature. I have an old colonial maple hutch that’s a little too wide for where we have it so I thought maybe I would make a replacement, one that would actually fit the space. Let me give you a case in point, my latest project. Real woodworkers proceed with a set of plans. More than likely I’ll attempt a difficult design, get in over my head, then have to adjust on the fly. Plus, use interesting woods, laminate them, draw the viewer’s eye to those rather than give a close inspection to the slightly off joints or the rough finish. The design, if it’s artsy fartsy enough, will more than compensate for primitive building strategies. What I figure, see, is the design is the thing. I could make excuses, lack of good tools, insufficient training, a shop that’s a shack on its way out, but the truth is I’m too lazy to learn joinery techniques, good finishing skills or more exotic methods of the trade. My real woodworking friends will tell you I’m a screw and glue carpenter, a 90-10 guy, the sort who possibly tries to be better but loses interest part way through and figures 90% is close enough. Published on That's Whats for Breakfast (with Dangle D.Let me state at the outset, I am no real woodworker. Published on Cool Water (hank williams sr. Skeeter Hawk’s tracks Assbestus (pro Unicorn Love) I'm always hoping to get someone to sign me on, teach me, collaborate with me, or anything. if you like it Share it, re post it, comment on it, facebook it, do what ever it is your little hearts feel the need to do. ![]() My name is Skeeter Hawk., I like making music.
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