Woodworking can be quite a rough master. Besides cut, hit and worn fingers, woodworking can mean long hours holding yourself at odd angles. Taking a break is more than just rest at times. As I age, I find that taking a break can prevent clumsy behavor. My back is not what it once was.
Working on computers in a lab, one after another, bending over just that little bit to reach the keyboards, not wanting to stop, hurrying before the computer labs is needed, took a rather large toll on me. now I have to be very careful. I have tried a lot of things, some have worked well, some have been less than helpful. What I have found, that really works wonders for restoring my balance, decompressing my spine, and clearing my mind, is Tai Chi.
The Tai Chi that I practice is the Yang 24 step simplified or Bejing Tai Chi. A rather pleasant break. It takes four to eight minutes to perform depending on how slow you go. Me personally, I am pretty slow.
Here is a rather good example of the form I practice. My form is a touch different and no where near as well done, but it will give you a good idea of what the clear area around my woodworking benches is used for.
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I have become quite well addicted to Tai Chi. It has become quite an integral part of my woodworking. When I am stressed, my back is tired, or I just need to clear my mind, I practice my form. If and when I ever take a woodworking class, I will probably make quite a spectacle of myself. Stepping outside every so often to perform this ancient therapy.
Lately I have been regularly going to The Village Carpenter. Kari Hultman is quite productive, writes well, and has managed to beat me to the punch posting on a subject three times in the last two months. She does great photography and great woodworking. Kari also gives good linkage to subjects and produces a timely and informative blog.
One of the tools I use regularly is glue. It pays to know as much about this stuff as you can. After squandering a fortune on wood and forming it into a useful shape, it is really lame to have the glue joints go bad.
A lesson I learned from my own experimentation; glues that do not allow for joint repair are useful just for this purpose. If you dilute Tightbond II, one part to two parts of water, you make a good finish for a gluing table. Glue is much easier to remove from surfaces with this treatment. I also wax the surface before I glue over it, but it really does a good job.
Another issue, glue goes bad on the shelf. Glue that is a year old, is usually on it’s last legs. Hide glue can keep for extended periods, as can several of the natural old school glues. Some really nice glues go bad in months.
At one time I had a shop full of jigs. Half of them, I couldn’t even remember what they where for. You set up a jig, make a bunch of electrons run around through wires and make a bunch of identical cuts. Weeee! Then you save the pretty much useless monstrosity of clamping tracks and knobs. Later you vulture it of parts to make another jig, and then finally it becomes trash. Six months later, you need a jig much like it, and this time you make it much better and more versatile.
Yet it still has a good chance of being useless for the next project, or hanging on your wall forever. Taking up as much space as a good tool cabinet does.
Hand tools can mostly allow you to escape the jigs. For the most part the jig is built into the tool and has been time tested for hundreds of years, by thousands of fine craftsmen. We still have shooting boards and bench stops. A good workbench is a classic multifunction jig. But on occasion, a jig still can be a dream. So I tend to look very closely when I see a hand tool using jig.
Rob Porcaro has just posted a jig of his own design on his blog. Exploring woodworking links, I found Rob Porcaro’s blog. He just posted a jig for drawer making. I am planing to do a lot of small drawers soon, so this may be something I need to throw together. I have usually clamped a pair of boards at the ‘back’ of a table and had them extend at the ‘front’ to support this sort of thing, but I can see where this might be more stable. Maybe if I clamp four boards? I rather like Rob’s jig, it is simple and won’t take up a lot of space.
Until you run a blog, there is an entire family of spam you never see. Stuff with pages of links to all the stuff they normally spam you on are common. In any case they have links that lead back to sites you really don’t want to see. Often they compliment your site mastery, wisdom, artistic style and blog in general.
I want to know what their search engine is based on. My most popular post for spam is my sawhorse post. I have no clue why. Once a day, at least, a spambot tries to put a spam message to the sawhorse post. What makes sawhorses so interesting to spambots? It is a short enough post, not a lot of special words to search on. It is not high ranking on google searches, so I have no clue as to why they have picked out that particular post.
Since I have mentioned spam on this post, this post is likely to become my most spammed at least for a month or two. Go figure.
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