School.

School

I still have all ten fingers, for now. Right, now that is out of the way, here’s a quick round-up of my first week.

The bench tools we've made in the first week

It was strange driving in on the first morning. That coupled with my kindly landlord’s enthused caring, has made me feel 15 again. Truth be told, I wasn’t too impressed by the first day. The tutors were slightly scatty and disorganized and spent more time telling me they didn’t have time to teach me things because this was a condensed 30 week course than actually teaching me things. Quite frankly I would have been happy if they had knocked on an additional week or two to the course if that meant some teaching actually got done. There was very limited instruction, and for a course which targets itself at people with no prior woodworking experience, it felt like the pace was set by those who did and those without just sort of muddled through the day trying to keep all fingers and toes intact. If it wasn’t for the short courses I did over the summer with John Lloyd, I would have been completely lost and not known the business end of a plane from the other, much less how to use it! Personally I found John’s method of teaching much more to my liking - he was easy to understand, methodical and detailed, with little nuggets of wisdom tucked away in almost every action. Still, its early days yet, and perhaps the teething problems of the first week will go away as things progress.

Scale model of my chosen design

We’ve spent a lot of time this week designing and coming up with our pet projects for term 1, on top of the small bench tasks we’ve had to do. Its 1 part frustrating and 3 parts fun – its really hard to think of ideas which are good, but at the same time original and which are aesthetically pleasing to boot. In the end, I’ve had to just go for pretty. I am hoping that with time, the process becomes a wee bit easier. At the moment I've got my work cut out for me and am trying hard not to get too stressed about everything - it feels like I'm trying to learn a billion things at once, from drawing to design, to actual carpentry, which is more than a little daunting. That said, there have been moments in the workshop when I've got my headphones in and have got stuck in to whatever it is I am doing at the time (whether it be drawing, planing, sawing or the like) and life is good - its just a really sweet spot to be in.