First Project Completed
Over the weekend I finished work on the Basic Mobile Workbench (from Steve Ramsey). The work had some complications to it, caused by my lack of attention to detail, but I’m happy with the overall product.
It’s definitely not perfect, some of the boards are 1/2” off because I mismeasured something, most of the angles aren’t perfect 90’s, and it rocks edge-to-edge a little bit probably because of that (I need to put a shim under the caster), but it’s a start, and it’s a necessary step onward to being able to do more, and to do better. As I was finishing it, I kept thinking about a quote from a game I used to play a lot, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, that felt very appropriate:
Technological advance is an inherently iterative process. One does not simply take sand from the beach and produce a Dataprobe. We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then our better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on. Each minor refinement is a step in the process, and all of the steps must be taken.
– Chairman Sheng-ji Yang ,”Looking God in the Eye”
That is what this workbench feels like, to me - a crude tool that will be used to fashion better tools. At some point I may build a bigger, more featureful, or nicer looking workbench. In fact, I’m sure I will - Steve Ramsey has plans for a “BMW Plus” as part of his Weekend Woodworker course, and I’m definitely interested in watching those videos. At some point, this little workbench will be obsolete, replaced by something better, something that I could only have built by having the basic workbench in the first place. So having realized that, I thought it was only fair to include the quote (somewhat abridged) on the bench to remind myself that my work isn’t perfect, sometimes isn’t even up to my own standards, but that it is still an iteration, and an improvement that allows other improvements to happen.
Of course, right now the workbench is just holding a router table and miter saw, along with some misc parts and tools, but even that is an improvement - it feels better to have everything mostly consolidated, and the only woodworking items that aren’t on or in the bench are tools that have another place (e.g. in the tool chest) or unused lumber which is off to the side where I can look through it as needed.
Smaller Things
While I don’t know if I really count it as a project (though that’s probably me being unfair to myself), I also built both of the cat food bowl stands I had planned to make for Tom and Miles. Neither one came out perfect (though oddly the first one came out better than the second), and working on that showed me a lot of deficiencies I still have - I need to be more careful at planning my cuts and measurements, as well as making sure my glue-ups and joints can be done at all, and with the tools and clamps I have available. And of course as I was going to lacquer the cat bowl stands, I dropped the spray can and broke the cap, so it’s now a pressurized $5 piece of junk and I need to get a new can, as well as the stands both being unsealed and unprotected. Still, the cats don’t seem to mind, and I’ll pick up a new spray can soon, clean them off, and seal them properly.
Onward, further iterations
I have a few things in the pipeline in terms of future projects: the sewing table still needs to happen at some point, a better workbench is definitely going to be needed at some time, and there’s a couple of small projects that I want to give to Anna as gifts, but I think the next item on my list is going to be the spice rack I’ve been planning for the kitchen.
The Spice Rack
I bought a round spice rack from Costco a couple years back, it holds 20 jars of various things, and while it’s decent I’ve never been fully haappy with it. The lids don’t screw down well all the time, the round rack doesn’t let me see all the spices at once, it takes up kind of a lot of counter space (it’s ~6” in diameter), and getting the jars in and out of their slots sometimes takes a couple tries to get the angle right. it’s definitely one of those items where it’s good, but it could be a lot better.
With that in mind, I ordered a 24-pack of (square) spice jars off Amazon, which showed up a couple days ago. I can already say that I like these jars a lot more - the lids are metal so they thread on easily and don’t cross-thread, they came with labels for both the vial and the lid (so I don’t have as much an issue of mixing up which label goes with which jar when I have many of them open at once), and they’re square instead of round, so they fill the space available to them better. My plan right now is to have them in 4 rows of 6, inclined outwards slightly so that the lid labels are easy to read. This should wind up only sticking out a few inches (3-4”) from the wall instead of the 6”+ that the current rack does, and ensures that I can see all the labels at the same time. I’m still thinking about the design, and one of the issues is that I don’t have a table saw or band saw, so I can’t easily resaw lumber to be thinner, nor do I have a planer to do so. I don’t think I want this thing to be made out of 3/4” lumber, it’ll just look too bulky, but I’m still working on what to make it out of, and even exactly what it will look like.
A Better Workbench
Steve Ramsey is the one who designed the Basic Mobile Workbench I made, and he has a “BMW Plus” that seems pretty nice, but I want to take some time first to use the BMW I built and see what I think needs to be improved. One thing I’m already noticing is that some more storage would be nice - mostly laterally, not vertically. I’d like to get to the point where most of the woodworking power tools could be kept underneath, along with the stuff like sandpaper and glue and such, and there’s definitely not enough room right now. I also want to figure out some way to store clamps, and I think I could mostly do that now, but if it was at least a few inches longer I think it’d be a lot nicer. Still, I’ve BARELY used the workbench so far, and it’s a little early to be rebuilding it. On the other hand, one thing that would be useful right now is a smaller modular tool bench that i could set various power tools on. Ideally, it would be at the correct height such that I could use the BMW as an outfeed or infeed table for the tools. I’m mostly thinking of the router table and miter saw, for now, with the possibility of a bandsaw or table saw as well.
A modular tool bench
So that’s going to be my next shop project, then. A lower bench with some kind of modular bolt-in system on the top that I can bolt the table saw, or the router table, or the miter saw, etc. to and have them end up at the same height as my newly built workbench. I think some storage underneath the tool platform would also help with my above-mentioned consolidation and storage issues, so that seems like a win, too.