This morning, when I headed out into yet more wind and rain I said to myself ‘Five’ as it was the third day of my normal exercise week. Walk no 5 is the obvious swing point of the week and having made half way it’s more likely that i’ll finish the week being able to say Nine or Ten : next week i’ll also be saying One again out on the back deck as I try to add body weight squats and Zero as I go completely Eccles cake free for March – I could just claim that i’m giving up Eccles cakes for Lent. It’s been a bit of a slump week after last week’s misplaced enthusiasm and confidence : I weighed and what that tells me is that i’m only just making my goals. This week has been hard all round, not just the weather and I had to wonder whether it’s been the kind of week where, in the past, I would have given up and had some biscuits to make me feel temporarily better – this week i’m definitely embracing the suck.
Yesterday, as I write I spent most of the day stripping out the small back bedroom that I use as a work space – mainly for writing my blog posts. Most of you will know how that kind of job goes : start thinking that it will be a couple of hours to freshen the paintwork and yet still be at it when the sun goes down.
A few posts back I wrote about having to create a temporary work space indoors when it looked to me as though it will be months before i’m able and ready to move into the workshop. I can do crafting and modeling jobs in the kitchen using my sewing table although it totally dominates the space such that it’s a PITA to get around it. My first plan was to buy a smaller table and set that up instead but then I had the bright idea of completely reorganizing the back bedroom, where the computer is set up, set the new table up in there and use that instead as a more permanently set up work station and man cave.
Iv’e been serial watching prop maker Adam Savage in his workshop/cave for several years now and recently concentrating on those episodes in which he tweaks his work space infrastructure in some way : one thing he emphasizes when he is asked about early priorities is lighting. As soon as I worked out that the table needed to go upstairs I thought about lighting first – in fact my first additions to the workstation was to be a pair of lights – only I made my first mistake in ordering USB powered lights and they won’t work until I buy a charging USB hub as well. Nice thought though.
The next thing I realized is that this worktable is not only an experiment in preparing to set up the larger and more permanent one in the workshop but it’s an experiment in having everything I need in one place to work with : Savage would call it flow and first order retrievability of tools and materials rather than spending time searching through my various crates and bits boxes. One of the early things I did was to make a list of everything I might use in a modeling project and adapt the workstation to have all of those things to hand : then of course I realized that lots of things on that list I would never use inside the house – my rattle can primers for example – but I might need a way of having my Dremel spinny thingy where I can put my hand on it rather than wandering down the yard and searching for it. I haven’t solved that one yet as it would seem to need something like a dentists work table or the kind of endoscope station we had in my last job.
First Iteration.
My first time table set up wasn’t successful as, once again. I failed to read the fine print in the description. What I thought I was getting was a shorter version of my large worktable but the new one is a folding version and when it’s unfolded and up it doesn’t have a level top and that’s something I need. I spent a bit of time trying to find a piece of scrap plywood to make a temporary work surface out of and while I eventually managed to find and cut a piece it doesn’t quite fit to day one and two were : table not quite right, worksurface doable but not quite right and lights need more accessories to be functional. Typical day one of a project then !
Day two was sketchbook time as the workstation that I really wanted was how I modified my actual desk, which started life as a dining table, and now has an upper extension layer as a monitor stand and cubby hole/storage area. I’m sure that I saw one in one of the New York museums countless years ago and recently saw something similar for sale on a US based auction site. I’m sure I could build one because I built the one on my computer desk although I used the workbench in the old workshop to do so….QED.
Second try
Iteration two almost became, or started out with, an entirely new table (see below) to start with as I was so frustrated by the first one : the new folding table refuses to form as a flat working surface and even with an approximate piece of scrap ply as it’s added work surface the ply still rocked and I detest working on a wobbly surface. Just like the old workshop where the workbench was mounted on three different levels of floor and only stayed flat and stable because I built downwards from the actual working top to the various levels of floor. Now of course the workshop has a newly poured concrete floor and the lager table should work well in there : i’m talking about the new table and inside the house – it wobbles and it’s surface isn’t level which is an awful way to have a workstation.
If the back wall looks a bit Jackson Pollock it’s not mold but my recent attempt at layering paint with a stipple roller.
My huge surprise came when I was spending far too much time working out how to make my crappy new picnic table function as a modeling table cum indoor workbench : in short….it didn’t and I couldn’t find an elegant solution. One of my early ideas was to use the new workshop floor as it is right now, invest in a MIG welder, learn how to weld and tack together a strong but reasonably light framework for an indoor lightweight worktable cum bench. My long term plans for the new workshop already included a multi function welder and all the accessories : my first potential project was to be the racking framework at the front/side of the workshop that comprise the base for the storage. This project kinda/sorta brought that forward and it doesn’t need the storage racks built until much later on in the actual workshop rebuild.
What happened next was that I was searching Ebay and came across another copy of the same former dining table that I use as my desk and computer station. While being a bit posh and sought after in it’s day many of Ercol’s products are now either expensive period collectibles or at the opposite end go quite cheaply : the one I found is a bit beaten up (has patina) which is just how I like older solid wood furniture. The table itself is going for not very much and it’s the carriage/courier that would be the make or break on the price. Right now, as I write, I have several of the usual white van man suspects competing for the contract and as their price slowly comes down it’s almost at the point of being a goer.
As I write, my bid won and I completed the request to the low bidding courier but then I kept getting messages asking for an Email address for the seller – only they hadn’t supplied one and now they’re not responding to me so iv’e no idea what’s going on. Hopefully it will sort itself out and i’ll have a second dining table to convert into a workbench. In the meantime I spent most of the weekend working on Trungle hole and rather than setting up with every tool available I simply put to one side the tools I actually used.
I really like the idea of having a second solid table as I find them aesthetically pleasing and converting a former dining table to a worktable would be a good second life for something made from solid wood rather than modern sausage wood which won’t last and gain character as it ages. I hope also that it makes my current writing station into something that looks more like the title photograph which I understand to represent St Jerome at his desk.
Second Iteration.
In which my back bedroom workstation stops being a wobbly picnic table with a sheet of plywood on top to a handsome mid century dining table with one side trimmed off to sit flush against the wall it sits against. During the interval – while I wait for white van man to pitch up with the table I did some early work on the Trungle Hole baseboard – I had a few tries at laying the tracks and designing the layout/diorama centerpiece which is modeled on the Win engine house at a real mine down in western Cornwall : east pool mine near Camborne.
New workstation table in place having been modified, stripped sanded and varnished, and the baseboard for Trungle hole quarry and mine getting some early experiments with track layout. Critical I think is the lighting and that’s the first one of three planned in place. In time I want to add a back board with a load of magnets embedded to hold my tools and a series of trays across the back to hold small stuff.
All in all i’m a lot happier with a rather handsome and solid table – that doesn’t wobble around – rather than the second attempt which did.
Dirty Wet Dog, the great adventure. 