Rehabilitation and small steps

Hello and welcome to Hungry Woodworker, a humanistic exploration of woodworking, purpose, and making a living. I’m Taliesin and one thing I do when not working is write; some of which gets edited into essays and shared every other Thursday. Thank you for being here.

Hello! My little newsletter is going to take a summer hiatus. I've been busy with more family activities—which is a good thing!—and haven't been writing nearly as much (except for a short story for my kids about a child spy hunting down a rare artifact in Washington, D.C., which doesn't exactly fit the woodworking theme so it's not appropriate to share here).

Though I have been continuing work on the bedside tables, my long-suffering partner Josiah is demonstrating a super-human level of patience. I've got a little ways to go yet.

I made small pieces of wood! And I glued some of them together to make two table tops!

I enjoy the weird shapes and cracks in the boards of the middle table top featured here. I filled a few of them with a mixture of Cherry saw dust and glue. Josiah will get to choose which top he likes best for his table; I'm genuinely curious if he'll go for the gnarlier one or the more civilized one.

I've been working on making curved legs for the tables, using techniques I learned at Mark Laub's workshop. The first photo is my first prototype leg; the others are of my second prototype after it's been shaped and its edges rounded. Once I connect the aprons and lower pieces that span the legs, I'll finish softening all the edges of the legs.

And I made this little piece out of a damaged piece of Red Oak that had a crack down its center and green discoloring from water. Dad said such damage can occur when a tree twists while it's growing and water gets into the trunk.

The wood is pretty much unusable, but I couldn't bring myself to put it in the burn pile. It's been hanging around my shop for a couple of months, then I got the idea to fill in the crack with Soft Maple that I shaped with a chisel for each section of the various gaps. I call it Rehabilitation.

My dog loves sitting in this plant more than anything else. It's got a big, Milo-sized flat spot in the middle.

I hope your next few weeks are filled with small actions that bring you closer to your goals, even if it takes a little longer than you expected. Be well ❤️