Cherry, ingenuity, and cold.
Last night (before that AWESOME episode of "Lost") I got in some decent shop time. I rough cut the last 8 of the 40 cherry pieces and planed all 40 smooth on the two wide faces. Then I ran 20 of them through the jointer to smooth one edge. Then, in a spark of ingenuity, I "ganged" 10 at a time and ran them, smooth side down, through the surface planer to smooth the opposite edge. Normally, I would have cut each piece, one at a time on the tablesaw and run each piece another 2 passes through the jointer. This "new" technique not only made each one perfect, but saved about TWO HOURS of work.
It got cold last night. I don't have good heat in the shop (working on this, but won't have it until NEXT winter) and hate working with cold fingers. So, at least I got an EXCELLENT start on this project, and can continue when temps are higher. Hopefully this weekend.
posted by Tim B. @ 10:04 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Your spark of ingenuity must run in the family. While going through stuff I came across the newspaper article that appeared when Grandpa Beauregard won an award at Ford Motor Co. for one of his suggestions. The gist of it was that he suggested stacking pieces and punching some holes together instead of separately and your post reminded me of that.
Gretchen took the article home with her to scan it and I will put it in a post in future. If the text is not readable after scanning I will key it in.
My dad would use the term "continuous improvement", has taught classes on the subject, and even has a videotape class about it.
Continuous improvement is great for a workplace because a procedure can be put in place and repeated every day from then on. For my woodworking hobby, though, should I really document procedures for turning several rough pieces of wood into smooth ones, and refer to a procedure manual? That would definitely take the fun out of the hobby.
I'm looking forward to seeing that article when available!
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