Woodworking for Dwarves

I’ve been watching my box-making video, with Doug Stowe. If you’re a tool person, you have to get this disk.

Doug Stowe is an old guy who lives in Arkansas, and he moves and talks slowly, and he has such a soothing voice, the DVD would be worth it purely as a relaxation video. He makes furniture, but between big jobs, he builds weird boxes. He has a workshop with a Shopsmith, a 1948 Atlas table saw, and a jointer, plus a few other unremarkable tools.

One wall of the shop is obscured behind shelves of lumber. He finds bits of it here and there, and he buys pieces he finds interesting, and he stores it up for later use.

It’s really neat. For decades, I have fantasized about making furniture, but that is not likely to happen. But you can have the same kind of creative experience–cheaper, faster, and easier–making small stuff like boxes. Stowe says he likes it because he can try out new ideas on a small scale, before applying them to big projects.

I think I may try this. It might be tremendous fun.

Take a look at this guy’s website. The furniture is wonderful.

It makes me regret selling off the land my relatives and I inherited, up in Kentucky. If I lived up there and I wanted a nice piece of maple or oak, I could walk outside, apply the chainsaw, maul, and wedges, and get what I needed. It would be wonderful to have some wood from that land. Too late now, though.

We still own the main barn on my grandfather’s Powell County farm. Maybe I could manage to get a few boards. They make barns up there out of white oak.

I had a swell time at the dentist’s office. I’m not totally positive the anaesthetic worked; I felt some pretty unpleasant sensations while he was reaming out my vintage filling. I told him I’d kill for a chair like his. He said it was possible to buy a dentist’s chair all by itself, without the other stuff. “Let me guess,” I said, “seven thousand dollars.” He said, “Eight, actually.” He said he didn’t understand why they were so expensive, and I said maybe the manufacturer figured insurance was paying for most of it. And my dentist said that was incorrect. He said the money came from ME. Apparently, most dental work is not covered by insurance. I feel like I ought to be able to go over there and sleep in that chair whenever I want.

I asked him whether the filling would be a big job, because it had been so long since I had had a filling done, I did not remember. He said, “You’ve never HAD a big job.” I guess that’s true, although I did suffer for four years with braces.

Once again, my phone went off during the visit and informed me I had to go to the dentist.

I don’t know where my sister got off to.