Another one of my partially achieved ambitions
I have always had my partially achieved ambitions. This largely comes from having more ambitions or interests than one can find time to pursue as part of a busy life.
I have had, and continue to have, many and widely varied interests, more than one could pursue in a lifetime. People who are like this usually end up with numerous unfulfilled ambitions, along with possibly some major achievements in areas where they were able to devote more concentration and time.
One of my hobby interests has been to be a woodworker, able to make furniture or musical instruments such as violins, cellos, guitars and mandolins. Obviously I have not been able to pursue this interest very far, at least for the work that I just described.
In practice, I have been more of a repairman, not a maker or constructor. I do have one musical instrument that I made some years ago. My son Jeff at one time had an interest in learning to play the violin, and his teacher encouraged me to obtain a viola and learn to play with him. I first made what I called a Quickfiddle, using viola dimensions. The viola is a bit larger than the violin, but not nearly so large as a cello. Violas are not usually seen in country bands, but are quite common in orchestras. The viola is known as an alto instrument, lower in its pitches than the violin, but not so low or deep as the cello or bass viol. My Quickfiddle is more an egg-shaped instrument, not the standard shape, but it doesn’t sound too bad.
For a long time I have wanted to develop an oldtime workshop, of the type that woodworkers used in the days before the advent of electric power tools. It is not that I have anything against electric power tools. I have some of those, and I use them often. For example, I use an electric skil saw very often, as well as electric drills of several sizes. I have a good table saw and a good drill press. But I have long had a fascination with old tools, such as were used by old-time woodworkers in the years before electricity became available.
I was born in 1940, about five years before electricity came to our community. My Dad let me work with him in our farm shop even when I was very young, so at a right early age I was becoming familiar with hammers and handsaws, carpenter’s squares, measuring tapes, screwdrivers, chisels, rasps and files, hand planes, and so on, and was boring holes in my boards using the brace and bit. When I was very young, my Dad and Grandpa were involved in building a full set of farm buildings — our hay barn, chicken houses, brooder house, sheds for farm implements, a garage for the car, and so on. I’m sure that I wasn’t much help, but my Dad let me help him anyway.
When I was 3, I helped him by handing him nails while he worked. When I was 8, he let me nail on some of the decking on the new car garage. I hammered my thumb a few times, and had to straighten the nails pretty often before I got them driven in all the way. I did some renovations on that building about 10 years ago, but that old decking that I nailed on in 1948 is still holding up very well in 2021.
I love old-time tools. I would still rather use my old-time hammer than to use a power nailer, even though I understand that the power nailer is a time and labor saver. My skil saw is great, and I wouldn’t want to do entirely without it, but I still have a fascination with handsaws such as I learned with in the 1940s. When my father passed away in 2010, I received about a dozen handsaws that had been his through the years. One of them may be the very saw that I first started trying to use when I was 5 years old. I can’t remember well enough to be able to say which one is the very one.
I am also fascinated with the carpenter’s square. One can combine an interest in math and trigonometry to discover very interesting possibilities that can be achieved with a carpenter’s square. One of these days I would like to add an oldtime hand-powered drill press to my collection. I still only have one of the old wooden planes from early day carpenters.
•••