Wrestling with wood...

It's funny how at any given time we can look at our lives and say to ourselves, "Wow! I never saw this coming."  That is the phase I am in now.  This past week I reorganized my salvage wood shed and put up a table I bought from the Habitat for Humanity Restore store.  It was only $10 and it was beat up!! That was what was so attractive to me.  At first I thought of doing a transfer on it and then I just decided I needed to put in my wood shed for when I am nailing together pallets or priming the wood.  That table was of coarse the Pandora's box that led me to reorganizing my whole shed!!  But now I have a table in my shed and love it.  Its first day in my shed it was used to put primer on the two beams of raw wood.  Once they were dry, it was their turn on my table saw.  I was cutting these pieces not for myself, but for a workshop I am teaching later today.

Whenever I use my table saw I have a level of concentration I have never experienced before and say little prayers throughout the whole process. They mostly consist,  "Please don't let me lose any limbs, fingertips, to not sneeze..." etc. The other common prayer is, "Please don't let this one kick back! " Well that prayer wasn't answered!  This piece did just that! As a result I had to change how I cut the rest of the wood to avoid the same thing happening over and over again. (Some lessons just are a little painful like that!) This piece kicked back and hit me in the stomach.  The carved curve on the back of the wood was the mark the saw gave it as it was taking flight! Thank goodness it didin't hurt that much. For once I was grateful for the extra padding around my tummy.

From that point on the rest were cut without incident.  The problem was I wasn't pushing the wood all the way through to the other side, which caused it to launch once cut.  Lesson learned!  God Willing!

After the wood had been cut and my saw put away I got a phone call from one of my good friends Heidi M.  She told me she had just picked up her daughter from practice when she saw some guy wheeling out a huge gate to put out to the curb had she had room in her car she would have loaded it for me, but the best she could do was call me.  Within the hour I got in my car and went to check it out.

There's always this fear that someone is going to get there first, but sure enough it was still there and it was beautiful!!  So I wrestled with it and put it on top of the other junk that seems to live in the back of my car and headed to the softball game my daughter was playing at.  I later thanked my girlfriend for being "my eyes on the street".  I cannot wait to get this thing apart and do some awesome transfers on it!  Thanks again Heidi.

Well I'm off to teach that workshop.  Its for the CIPPA a photographers association.  I am delighted to bring this process to photographers and hey if I can turn anyone onto repurposing wood, I am a success!  Wish me luck.