Sunday, May 3, 2009

Our Own Woodworker Extraordinaire (Norm - Eat Your Heart Out!)

My husband has taken up woodworking. He couldn't begin with a simple bird house or something it, oh no! Instead of getting to know about the medium and tools gradually he dives in, and often ends up over his head in a project!

Through the years we've been together he has plied his trade as a machinest and metal worker and over those years any necessary wood working project around the house has turned into blight on his otherwise perfect metal working record. He built various wood projects like a shelf or small cupbaord only under duress and totally hated every second of any project where he had to work with that unreliable product - wood.

Well about three years ago he got into doing the wood work for a Model A woody he was helping build with a friend and though wood is still in mny ways a four letter word, he's finding at least an understanding of that soft, and unpredictible medium. His first project recently was a porch glider for our patio that he was sure he could begin and finish in his time off between Christmas and New Years of that year.

Well, that project went from one week to five long weeks and really sent him reeling with the familiar frustration surrounding, "That unreliable thing called wood!"

This year he again tried to create a wood piece - a table that folds up for the patio, and now he is working on another, a moveable island for our kitchen. The stress is still there for the way wood can sometimes not seem reliable because it can grow and shrink in the middle of a project - but he has come to enjoy the endless power tools that go with woodworking today. His excitement doesn't come from the project itself anymore, but now comes from the love of how many power tools he can work with during the process of any given project.

So where does he go from here? I'm really not sure. But I think he finally has the sense that he really doesn't have to conquer a wood job to enjoy it anymore, and that is at least a start to liking the art of woodworking!

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