Happy New Year! I am continuing my twice yearly (at least) blogging. Honestly, I will try and do better. I miss it, and it seems to be one way to force myself to maybe even take a photo now and then.
I have shared a few photos of the shed in my life. This 10X12 shed is a workshop, a storage space and, of course, a retreat of sorts. It is hard to be mad or frustrated with the world when you are surrounded by the smell of sawdust, the sight of tools with earned patina, and a comfortable chair. I have found that a comfortable chair may be the most important tool in the shed. You know, a chair for thinking. Or napping.
This space also allows me to continue my collection of workbenches and now I have three. Seriously, someday I will just collect stamps or something easy to store and carry, but for now I will stick to workbenches. And anvils. My first one was a beat up bench that I found in Michigan. My second workbench was an estate find, and it holds a TV, and, as always, lots of books. Being small and pretty, it is "furniture" and it resides in the living room.
My latest bench was a gift and it was hard and expensively earned. My lifetime friend, mentor, and colleague passed away last fall and this was his legacy to me. For more than 40 years he taught me, helped me, fixed my caneras, and was basically family for me. He certainly was not above kicking me in the butt (stay in school, do better in school, file your negatives, be better) but he also was smart enough and kind enough at times to not say anything. Since my parents passed away, he was my touchstone for my hometown, and I can think of only a few times in the past 30 years that I returned to Eau Claire without stopping in for a drink, a conversation, or. welcoming place to stay. I miss him every time I pick up a camera, working or not, and when I wander through Eau Claire.
What to do with such an important gift? Frankly, I would rather have in his garage, covered with his latest project or holding anyone of the ten drills, the many, many tape measures and tools, the gallons and cans of paint and solvents and the other detrius of a skilled craftsman. He was 88, and a resource and frend of inestemiable value. The workbench was his father:s, so it is probably around 100 years old.
As with most things (and people) that have been around and that have been used, it shows its age. There are scars and stains, dents and hurts. Paint from projects long forgotten colored the dense wood of the top. Oil from who knows what has bled into the grain. I will always wonder what he painted that was traffic cone orange! I preserved the orange blob but I spent more than a day sanding and polishing the top. The dents and scratches did not disappear but they appear a bit healed, and the four coats of a satin finish shows off the beauty of the wood.
It is beautiful and priceless to me. As I was putting my shop back together, I hesitated to put anything on the bench. Part of that was because I love looking at the wood and wondering what was created on this bench that caused that stain or made that dent. I also feel that after all that time and effort to refinish the top, I didn't wasnt to scratch that beautiful finish.
But that is silly--it is a tool, and it was made to be used. I doubt that John or his father would think that is should just be a piece of furniture, but rather it is to be used as intended. So I have used it, and just yesterday I put a scratch on it as I moved my miter saw to the workbench. I winced, but then I smiled and silently toasted an absent friend.
