With Halloween around the corner, I've been making ghosts. I started with some leftover beadboard and a jigsaw, making cartoon-spooky silhouettes that I spray-painted white and staked in the yard. My plan has been to "ghost" some friends for the holiday, by staking ghostly placards in their yards anonymously, but I haven't got around to it … Continue reading Spooky Things I Saw in the Workshop
An incredibly thoughtful friend just gave me a band saw salvaged from the garage of "an ancestor." All signs point to the fact that it was never used, but my band-saw inexperience and general blade anxiety led me to call in quasi-professonal help before plugging in my new toy. Enter my neighbor, who so often … Continue reading I’m with the Band Saw
After a two-week break between trimesters, construction school ginned up again with a bumper crop of new students. I remember back in 2016, when I was a new student, nervous about whether I had the cool overalls and tape measure and whether the other kids would make fun of me. A year later, I've traded … Continue reading A Screwy Back-to-School Story
Long before I started collecting yellow power tools, I collected levels, those elegantly palindromic devices that can tell if a surface is out of synch with the Earth's horizon. I scoured estate sales in ranch houses built after World War II, the ones with pegboard-paneled basement workshops, where--I can only imagine--men of the Greatest Generation retreated … Continue reading My Level Best with My Best Level
Trucks are a big topic in construction school. Some guys have them; some guys don't. Everyone wants one. Even I want a little pickup, but don't tell my minivan. When Building Construction Technology school started last summer, the talk was all about pickups: Ford v. Dodge. Extended v. regular cab. That kind of thing. But over … Continue reading Truckonomics
A veteran house-framer helped out in our class this week. He taught us many things, not the least of which is that I don't need my tape measure as much as I previously believed. This revelation comes as a blow, because I love my tape measure. Even if it isn't a fancy Stanley LeverLock like the … Continue reading The Measures of a Man
Build Me Up, Buttercup 