Ah the challenges that come with moving and setting up shop again. I guess it took a snowy day in North Dakota for me to realize how much fun and creative juice I experience in preparing a new workplace. Call me the experiential woodworker, but I like to organize my stuff as I go. Not surprisingly, I’ve been known to sometimes enjoy reading Soren Kierkegaard, the father of existentialism. More importantly though, I find it ironic that with all the planning tools available via books and computers, it suits me more to layout my saws, planes, braces, and assorted hand tools based on my gut than to automatically repeat something from the last residence. Take my set of hand saws, I can’t settle this time for hanging my go to saws on four Shaker pegs. No. This time they’ll reside on a till of some kind. Even though I don’t have a specific till design in my mind, I find it refreshing somehow. There are certainly many nice tills featured online as examples. What I have is a space on the wall next to a cabinet and a desire to store about 10 panel saws efficiently. So as silly as it might seem, I am really enjoying this experience of how a simple saw till might become part of this wall. Two basswood corbels, leftover from earlier moves, were my starting point. I can imagine a till resting on those corbels and that is about it for now. I know that I will use 3/4″ thick pine or poplar as stock for construction and the rest will be delightfully figured out as I go. Plain and simple I am imagining what I might view as a low budget saw till. My Design criteria is to not let it look like a piece of furniture. If you know me you know already I don’t mean it. Frankly, I like what I’m seeing already and if you have limited shop time, as I do, this approach might appeal to you. This is certainly a family thing as my dad was more of a carpenter than me, had less woodworking resources at his disposal, and routinely savored his woodworking experiences. I’ll always remember that. If you saw my Victorian Scroll Saw in the April 2016 issue of Woodworker’s Journal, I can tell you that I developed the design in the same way. I enjoyed developing a design through a series of refinements. This former geologist can say that the design wonderfully evolved.
Blessings,
Jim
