Update

So, I've been in and out for the past couple of weeks. I decided to rearrange a little bit of my work area, to make it make more sense to me. I spun up a side project, which I'll talk a little more about at some point. I've come up with new chair patters, and I'm pissed off.

The work space I laid out is nice, but one of the things I've noticed as I go along is that it inevitably ends up looking trashed. Most of the stuff I don't need, things I'm not using, and so forth, end up littering the surrounding areas. And I'm able to ignore most of it because it's behind me. As are most of my tools... so I have to turn around when I'm at the bench to get my hands on anything.

Well, I solved some of that for now. First, there's a big table that I own that I've used as an auxiliary bench, but I've always used it as a crap-catcher of sorts. Now it's an auxiliary work table, underneath the window. A place to do assemblies, to leave wood stickered when I'm not playing with it, that wort of thing. What I'd been doing with it before is leaving it tucked under a shelf, and using it to hold things like drills and hardware organizers. Not a great use of space, and not a great habit to get into.  I did tuck a few things underneath it... like my antique tool chest, my Emmert vise, and a Festool Vacuum. The Emmert needs to be mounted to something soon, I'm tired of having and not using something that is so well suited to chair making.

Parallel to that, is my bench. It's now 90 degrees to the wall, which means the big storage cabinet is to my left, and I don't have to turn completely around to get to it. And parallel to that is the shaving horse.

Side project is a crate that someone was throwing away. For a packing crate, it's surprisingly well put together, and as I've been trying to work out a few ideas on movable furniture, I thought that a very nicely made dresser built into a packing crate is a sort of metaphor for the kind of furniture I've had a use for for several years now. So, I'm going to build a nice dresser into the packing crate.

Lastly, I'm pissed off. I mad a lumber trip a week and some ago, and didn't get enough of what I thought I needed. I made a second trip up last week, didn't make it before they closed, and on the way home, my truck got rear-ended by a small bus. So, I'm still chasing the insurance company to get that sorted out. Hopefully soon it'll all be behind me in more than a literal sense.

10,000 hours? You gotta be kidding me...

So, I recently finished The Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. It's a great book for many reasons, but it does put forth his theory, which sounds unfortunately true, that it takes roughly 10,000 hours to become a real expert at anything... which generally entails about 8-10 years of regular work. If you're actually doing whatever it is for 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, it's probably closer to 5 years... but even still, that's a lot of time. Especially considering all the skills implied in woodworking that I want to become expert at.

Considering that my workdays right now consist of getting up at 6, eat, go to work by 7, work 8 hours, (and working on my new business and marketing plan during lunch break) ...then go to the shop for a few hours, then home, eat, and bed... so it's going to be a while before I'm an expert small businessman or woodworker or anything like that. AND I have to keep up my woodworking skills in the meantime.

I guess it could be a really imposing thing, but it's really helped me get a few priorities in order. The last few times I've been to the shop have been overshadowed by the fact that I'm still trying to put gas in the tank for the shop, get a better sense of direction with all of it, work full time, and more. So typically I show up in the evening for an hour, futz with a few things, lamenting that I need lumber and more time, and blah blah blah...But now that I think about it from the 10,000 hour perspective, I really don't have time for any of that. I gotta start working. Even if I'm just dusting off skills I already have, shop time is work time, and I need to make the most of everything while I'm in there.

So... I just about have the details worked out for the next chair prototype, and with any luck, this one will be the last before I can start trying to crank them out more regularly and sell them. And in the meantime, I have some dovetailing exercises to get back to, and then... and then...

Getting ready for a reboot.

So, the ideas are slowly emerging from the recesses of my head-cold addled brains...

JamesWatriss.com is off the air... for now. Mom did a good job of getting it up and maintaining it for me, and now I'm going to rebuild it from scratch.

This starts, of course, with domain hosting, which I'm trying to research now. Basically, I'm looking for a cheap, safe place to host a simple website, where I get to keep the domain name for myself, and hopefully not have to pay too much money to keep it up. Keeping ownership of the name is obviously a big thing, since it's my name. Feel free to offer comments and suggestions... I'm a total noob when it comes to actually putting up a website.

After that, I'm in the process of restructuring how I do business. I've been working on a new mission statement, and developing a new business plan, and marketing plan. And I'm developing a few ideas for the furniture I want to build. I'd love to do all commissions, all the time. But I think everyone wants that, and they all want to be the ebst and the brightest...

IF I can keep the ship steady, and IF I can make things work, I'll still work on custom work, probably involving reproduction. Very likely, it won't be on a commission basis, it'll be me working on the things I want to work on. I'll probably sell it.. but there are so many ifs involved right now that I really can't think much farther than "I'd really like to do this... I just don't know how yet."

There's a lot in the pipeline... it seems like there's a little more ever day that I have to get to. But I am getting to it.

Back to the drawing board

The past 6 months have been a very busy time. I was reminded of this the other night when I went to use my drafting table. It still had the drawing for the coffee table taped on, and the adhesive from the tape had been smeared in the summer heat. It took a while to get the tape off, and get the adhesive cleaned off, but finally I was ready to move on.

I've gotten started on the drawing for chair prototype number 3. Previous drawings were made on pieces of plywood, because it made a few things easier at the time. But now that I have a better handle on what's going on, (I think?) I think that a paper drawing will serve me better to help work out a few of the finer details I was having a hard time with while I improvised and free-handed my way through the first two. They're both functional chairs, and I think I like them for what they are, but neither is as comfortable as I would have liked, so the new design will be a little more flexible in terms of how the back is to be installed. I have a few other ideas in mind, too, that will let me play with the chair form a little more, but we'll see how those come together, or not.

Finally... I have some shop time. But it's COLD

Thank God the stupid holidays are over. Between a day job, a seasonal job, family obligations, putting in the time after slacking on family obligations while doing seasonal work, and dealing with wedding-related things... I finally am past it all and back into something resembling a regular schedule. Well, past most of it... wedding isn't for another 9 months.

So, this evening I had a planned wedding planning engagement, but it got canceled last minute.

Cool! I can run up to the shop!

I got up there, and I remembered very quickly just how cold it got last year! Holy crap! Last year I was smart enough to leave heavy, warm clothing to work in... and I took it all home over the summer.

I talked to Chris for a while, until he left. I hung out for about an hour after that, and left... it was just too damned cold to get anything done without heavier clothing on. I packed up the relevant notes and books, and headed home.

Last thought for the evening. One of the projects I've been trying to work out for the past several years is to finish writing a book on my experiences at North Bennet, and working in Woodworking retail. I think it's time I made a promise to myself that I'll write for at least an hour a night. The only way to keep up writing skills, after all, is to write.

Sorry to be away for so long. Talk to all of you soon.

Busy busy busy... but not in the shop

So, I accepted some seasonal retail work as a short-term thing a few weeks ago. Then, a few days later, I got a call about a temp position working or a composite place in Woburn. The good news is that I have money coming in, and that the composite job is on the way to Lawrence, so it means I'll be spending time in the shop after work, once the retail thing dies off after Xmas.

The bad news? I've been working retail again. Sigh...

Chair 2, part 4

So, I went in the other day to work on the new chair, and got it more or less together, and I cut an improvised seat out of some plywood to see how the final result has come together. The verdict is, it's better than the last one, in some ways, but still not there.

I also did the chopping of the legs, and once again I cut too much off of the back legs. So, I had to block it up to a comfortable angle, and then cut the front legs. Not a major issue, but a hassle nonetheless. I also cut the tops of the back legs down, which helped, I think, but probably should have been done later. And, before I got in to do more final shaping, I made plugs, and plugged all of the screw holes. 

The placement of the back on this chair was overkill... I was going for "lower," went a bit too far. AND, the shape is all wrong.

The old chair (on the left) has a back that is concave on top. BUT, the back is too high. The new chair (on the right) has a convex back, that's too low. The essence of the problem is that I'm going for good lower back support, and not getting it. The back on the new chair does come up to support the back just under the rib cage, but because the top of the back is convex, only the top part really does any work. So, the back does get supported, but only on the spine itself, which isn't very comfortable. When I sat in the old chair, I was able to make a comparison, and get a better idea of what I'm going for. I want a wider area of contact that supports the back properly. So, chair 3 will have a back that's a compromise between chair 1 and 2. Here we go again.

Because I don't want to keep chasing this around ad nauseum, and turning wood willy nilly into one uncomfortable chair after the other, I'm altering the design, again, to make the back placement a little more adjustable in the next prototype. It took a little head-scratching to figure out how I would go about doing this, but one side benefit is that I think I've managed to conceive, in concept anyway, a sort of 'chair fitter,' that I could use, if and when I build it, to size people when I build custom chairs for them. My gut-level conjecture is that people vary more in leg and arm length than they do in torso length, and that there should be a design that will fit everyone, more or less. That said, I'm aware that I have no basis for this conjecture. So, the chair measuring thing, much like the foot size measuring thing at the shoe store, should be able to confirm the theory one way or another, and allow me to build chairs that will fit people better in the meantime... when I get to that stage of business development.

On the positive side, the splay of the arms is much more comfortable than the parallel arms on the last iteration. Sitting in the chair is pretty nice, even if leaning back in it is not.

So, for now, the remaining question is how far should I take this chair towards completion? As a prototype, it's taught me a lot. BUT, it's just a prototype, and it's not a very comfortable one, at that. I can sit in it, with the plywood seat.  The thinking for now is that I'll at least finish shaping it, and oil it up. But it's not good enough, I don't think, to spend the money making an upholstered cushion that won't add as much comfort as a supportive back would give.

But who knows... maybe I'll do it anyway, just for the practice.

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In other good news, the lathe is back up and running again. I managed to finish the bowl I was working on, (with dubious results) and brought it home. I'm still not the greatest bowl maker, but it is nice to have small projects that are easily completed and fun to make.