Glorious, Glorious Shop Time

My wife gave me a wonderful gift today: shop time.

Now, don't go thinking that my lovely wife restricts my time in the shop. We have a 6-month-old baby and chores with which to contend, and any of you who have kids know the impact that can have on your time in the shop. Sometimes, it just doesn't happen.

But today, since I'm mostly caught up on old stuff for work, and since my brother-in-law is in town, things worked out nicely. The wife and daughter headed up to visit, and I got to delve into the pit of chaos that is my shop. It seems that, before I got sick, I had made quite a mess out there.

So I spent some time cleaning up, made a little progress on my Workbench, and picked some stock to use for a new cutting board I'm going to make soon. Not the most productive of days, and certainly not the most fun -- the progress to which I referred was an hour or so of sanding -- but it was extremely rewarding. Sure, my back aches, and there is little to show for my time, but actually to have gotten out there to do something was a milestone.

So I'll be updating you soon on the new cutting board; it won't be much different from the ones I made for Christmas, but I'll try to document the process better. And I hope to have the base of my Workbench completed in the next couple of weeks -- depending, of course, on when I get more shop time.

And soon, I hope, I will begin featuring some of my favorite YouTube woodworkers. I've gotten pretty excited about that since I first though of it.