It’s been almost six months since my last haircut and three months since my last shave. This is not intentional. I simply don’t care what I look like or what others think of my visage (hey, a Fancy Lad term!).
But I do notice that as my hair gets longer the people of Covington address me differently.
When I have short hair, they call me “sir” and ask for work. When I have long hair, they call me “brother” and ask for a cigarette. Alas, I have neither.
Today I processed all the stock for the doors for the Horse Garage. My goal is to get these suckers built by Sunday. If you are offended by machine work, please avert your sensitive eyes. While I would love to cut the joints by hand for these doors, I have winter bearing down hard on me. These doors are going together with loose tenons from the Domino XL.
The other project at hand is building a lot of bench accessories for “Ingenious Mechanicks.” Today I modified the Roman bench I built earlier this year so I can straddle it (without feeling like I’m going to the gynecologist) and to add some vises.
I did this by ripping down the top during a visit to the shop at Popular Woodworking Magazine. During the visit, David Lyell asked me why I was doing this. I said:
“So I can add a 14th century Italian twin-screw vise for boatbuilding.”
He busted out laughing like I was joking. I wasn’t.
I should get out more.
— Christopher Schwarz