Dear Good Hours,
Last time I wrote, I divested myself of some invasive thoughts about some of the bad days I’ve had through my “day job” working in Surgery. I went through today and read it again. It’s rough and raw and holy shit did it need a lot of editing. But I knew if I tried to edit it - I’d punch the delete button instead of publish, and then all those things I wrote wouldn’t leave.
I’m wired weird. I process my thoughts, my feelings, fuck, my whole world, best through writing. Either ink and paper, fingers on keyboard, or thumbs on iPhone screen, writing it down gets the invasiveness of whatever I’m chewing on out of my head, at least for a while. Still, there’s an additional quirk to my shit. Since I started blogging in 2009, and then with the influence of social media as a real world thing… it seems, if I don’t hit the publish button, then I didn’t write it, and if I didn’t write it, it’s still one of a hundred billiard balls, all racketing off the walls of the pool table in my cranium.
That’s a long way of saying, thanks for your patience.
*****
Moving on.
*****
In order to work on my daughter’s car over the winter, I’d emptied out the shop of nearly everything I could fit into the back of our Honda Pilot and haul to a nearby rented storage unit.
We decided to call the car DOA. I tried all of the recitation algorithms, but in the end a decision had to be made.
Now the car is back in the driveway, waiting for the scrapper to come and pick it up, and in the meantime, I have an emptied out shop and a chance to address all the things I think can make an improvement on my workflow.
And a chance to rid myself of a conceit I thought was a cool idea, but turned out to be a pain in the ass.
*
Before I started to move anything over, I spent a day cleaning up what was here and formulating a plan. I had a surprise waiting for me.
This is the bottom shelf of my wood rack, at least this is how I found it. The several sheet goods I kept leaned up against the rack hid the problem, it’s tough to see in the pic, but the right side of the screen is sagging and nearly broken from the weight of all these precious walnut pallet spacers and the large chunk of, I was told it’s walnut when I bought it, but it’s too light colored, it might be butternut, on the right side.
The poor shelf was not far from critical failure.
So I spent a couple hours unloading the shelf, and with a level, and a couple scrap 2x4 ends, rebuilt and reset the shelf.
The plywood is sagged from the abuse, but it will be fine. I restocked the wood. I built the rack in 2016, reinforced the other shelves with metal “L” brackets in 2020, and now added legs to the bottom “shelf” in 2024. I think we will be fine for a while.
*
The other thing I did was mount a blacksmithing leg vice I had for a while to the stump my anvil is mounted to.
The vice was rusty and abused when I bought her, and I didn’t take long to tear her all the way apart and clean her up. Man was she dirty, I must have pictures somewhere I can’t find right now.
After cleaning her up, a lot of penetrating oil and a lot of aggressive wire brushing, I repainted her with anti-rust Rustoleum spray paint. And she’s sat a few years waiting for me to decide how, and where to attach her.
This was the moment.
And let me tell you what I’m most excited about. Modifying hardware.
It’s not unusual that I have to add extra bends to strap hinges, or press a poorly turned hinge barrel tighter, or modify a nail that needs to be clenched.
Up til now I’ve used the big swivel vice I inherited from my wife’s grandfather. The drawback was this vice has textured jaws that help grip the piece.
But the texture often transfers to the finish, and sometimes the metal, of the piece I’m bending or modifying. Yes I have made a couple of L brackets from mild steel to help with the problem, but the juggling of clamping multiple surfaces together is sometimes much… and
The “L” stock I have does not have a sharp outer corner and all my strap hinge bends end up rounded instead of crisp when I use them. So I’ve suffered with this little bit of texture most of the time.
But the leg vice….
Jaws as smooth as an inner thigh.
Is it weird I’m excited about this fact?
Over the next few days I will leak things from storage back into the shop. There will be a new set up and an improved workflow. I think I may shoot a new shop tour video, it’s been a minute since I’ve done that.
Until I have further progress of strife to share, the best of everything to you.
Love Derek
Ratione et Passionis
I am constantly reorganizing my shop to make it more efficient, but it will never end. Tidiness is the bane of most workshop owners.