The New Shop Begins

Finally the building begins. After waiting for the permit to arrive in the mail and the two week waiting period following, I am now legally allowed to build my new workshop. I started small. You can see the sonotubes being filled with concrete, thanks to Jay and Bekah. Thirteen sonotubes will either support the sills or posts going up to the sills.

The timbers are mostly milled. A few more and then its on to joists. These will be the hickory trees felled to make way for new high voltage wires. They are small enough to get out of the woods with my one horse, yet big enough to serve as hefty timber joists. I also have 1000 board feet of maple waiting to be milled. These are thinnings from our sugarbush which will be milled into flooring, although I doubt I'll get to laying the finish floor this year.




I have actually done some fine woodworking in my old shop! I mentioned the blanket chest as wedding present in my last post. Of course, it was a surprise, so I could not publish the photos until after the wedding. I made the hinges in the forge. Nothing fancy, just traditional strap hinges. These are a lot of fun to make. A little fussy fitting the pin and "fingers" of the barrel, but not so much as to be discouraging, and shaping the strap itself is fairly quick and straightforward.





















So here's to Anna and Marco. After making dozens of similar chests, I still send them out with warm wishes for their owners. A lot of love goes into building them. I hope that emotion is not lost on those who haven't seen it being built. Is it Gibran's "Prophet" who says,"Work is love made visible."? I believe that is what a master craftsman strives to do.

To see other examples of my work go to my website:

jasonebreen.com

Jason