Power Tool Tuesday

Maybe you've guessed -- I LOVE my workshop. This is not your dad's workshop -- I'm guessing your dad did not have pink chintz curtains or vintage art prints in his shop. I do.

For as long as I can remember I have loved to watch men make things with big noisy tools. I liked to watch them cut wood at precise angles to make saw horse legs, picture frames, bookcases. I could watch heavy equipment moving the earth, digging foundations, tearing down buildings for a while, but I always came back to watching men cut and make with power tools -- it was always men, I never once saw a woman wield a power tool in my life.

Maybe that is why I came late to power tools -- I didn't think I could. I didn't know I was allowed.It's a funny story how I finally got around to buying my first drill -- I'll tell it sometime. But for now this post is about tools, having them, making them work. I had to teach myself how to make each one go. Sometimes I did that by trial and error -- I've messed up everything, twice. Somethings I learned from books or articles or Norm on TV -- God Love Norm. And sometimes I've asked, begged, someone who might know and hoped like anything that I could decipher their explanation and directive. (Men speak in torque and amps, women speak in "What button do I push?" We're just not speaking the same language.)

I love making things -- everything. I like making food and drapes and tables. It's all the same to me. I want what I want the way I want it. I will stand in a store and think, "Oh those pillow shams (drapes, tablecloth, insert textile drygood here) would be nice if they were padded, pleated, lined, longer, pink. I feel this way about household items that are sewn or sawn, stapled, glued, hammered or drilled. I want to make it myself. I learned to sew early and it was not lost on me that woodworking is in many ways very like sewing. There is a certain order, there are precise cuts, an entire project can be ruined with one mis-step.

But if you are like me and you like to make things and you'd like to learn to make things using power tools I am planning to do a Power Tools Tutorial Tuesday. You can come into my shop and learn a thing or two about the tools -- what they do and how they do it.





My first power tool was a drill -- drills are endlessly useful. They can be used to drill holes and also as a screwdriver. They can be used to make big holes and little holes. There are differnt types of bits to do different kinds of jobs. There are titanium bits and carbide bits, there are spade bits and forstner bits. There are electric drills, hammer drills, tiny battery operated drills and great big mamma-jamma battery operated drills. And there's a drill press. Here are my drills:

I only thunk this up today, that it might be a good idea to do a Power Tool Tutorial Tuesday. If you think so, leave comment and let me know if you want to learn more about power tools and what we can do with them. I have all kinds of toys not pictured here -- including a scroll saw, a biscuit cutter, air nailers and three kinds of routers. We can learn to make loads of fun stuff. Would you like to play too?