Hello! I am just waiting for Jai to get home from his first day doing the Halifax Run. He is driving seniors from the area who have medical appointments in Halifax, and he left this morning at 7, so I expect he will be pretty exhausted when he gets home. He likes driving the seniors, though, and he always comes home with funny stories that they told him about growing up in the area, so that's pretty cool.
I've had a very full work week this week as well. It's hard to believe that it's Thursday already. Jai and I both ended up working the holiday Monday, but I still feel like I lost a day! Well, tonight I think we are both hoping to take it easy, and catch up on our American Idol watching. Every time the guys on the radio started talking about it today, I had to turn the nearest noisy power tool on, so that they wouldn't spoil the ending for me! So we have to watch it soon, or all the suspense will be gone.
I got some time on the CNC this week, and played around with a couple of ideas. I don't have any completed products cut yet, but I did get a better idea of what is possible. I think Jai kind of feels like it's cheating, or something, and I'm sure a lot of people might get that sense. I was kind of wondering how I felt about it, too, until I started to see it in action. The truth is that it is just another tool, just like the tablesaw or planer. Unless someone creative is using it to it's full capacity, it will just sit there and collect dust (which doesn't take long in a woodworking shop!) Stephen likens it to the printing press, which I think is a good analogy. In my head I think of it kind of like using molds in ceramics. You have to start with a very good original piece, but once you have put the work in, you can recreate it, much like a painter or photographer who makes and sells prints. Until now, that wasn't really a possibility with woodworking. What I'm hoping it will do is allow me to wholesale some of my more popular and time-consuming products, like the meditation benches. I still have to pick out the right piece of wood, and do all the hand sanding, fitting and finishing, but all the cuts that take time and multiple setups on the tablesaw can now be done on the CNC instead. It takes my time on the machines from 4 hours down to 20 minutes, and that (in my humble opinion) can only be good.
And just like any other new tool, it opens new possibilities for ways of working, which I'm just starting to discover. I'll post some pics soon. Anyway, that was a bit of a rant, but Jai just got home, so I guess I should get going. It sounds like his trip went pretty well, he's jumping around like a monkey :)