I enjoy working with wood, and I suppose anyone who picks up a plane, a hammer, saw or a chisel could write an article about their projects. Yesterday I finished a project I started just a few week ago - honestly I have one more phase to finish before I can really say I'm done (but isn't that always true--we never really get done until we're read about in the obits).

My wood shop is mobile! Some things take a while so when I checked to see when I got motivated to "put wheels" on my woodworking machine I looked in the front pages of "The Small Wood Shop" (one of many books from "Fine Woodworking" magazine) and there it was: 12-13-94. Some projects don't happen "right away". (See further notes of reference at the bottom of this essay.)

As many of my projects start, there was a reason I had to clean up my shop - we needed to replace our 45 year-old garage door. Since we abandoned the idea of keeping a car in the garage many years ago, it became a great place to have some areas to do our bread-winning business of making rubber stamps until we retired in 1994, and then it was natural to add a few more items to the already stuffed garage. One week before the garage door man was scheduled to visit my shop to tell me what had to be done so he could work became the impetus to "clean out the shop". I simply had too much stuff. Mind you, it wasn't "junk"--it was (and still is) usable lumber and related items but "space" was voted on and something had to go.

An old "picked up" chest of drawers was the first project to be "mobilized". WHEELS make the world go around, or so they say, and now that old chest of drawers got wheels and it is now movable and not something you have to scoot around or leave it be. In order to attach the casters ("wheels" to the non- mechanical person) I had to remove the drawers so I could mount the casters to the bottom of the carcass. Boy, was I making progress! My first thought was to junk that old chest of drawers but the longer I looked at what was in the drawers I knew I have to save it. When I got those wheels on the old chest I immediately knew I had to put wheels on my router table. But I had already found a temporary place to store that router table because I had made a tall bench under which I could scoot the router table until I found time to attach casters to its carcass. The tall bench was "another project" I had to finish before the garage door man could even come to give me the verdict about what kind of work-room he needed. Well, when I got that tall bench made, and the router table scooted under same, there was my great Ryobi BT3000 -- in the way!

But I really didn't know my "Ryobi Saw System" was in the way because I like to work in small spaces, I thought the garage door guy could work around it! Wrong!. When I had gotten my chest of drawers "casterized" and a little more arrangement I called the garage door guy and then it was made plain I had to move the saw completely out of the garage!

Well, thankfully the weather cooperated and not only did I remove all the "extra" lumber which I had stored in great little containers here and there, the day the garage door installer came I had put my saw out in the drive-way (with the other stuff--already covered with tarps).

$715 later, when that new garage door had been installed, I made a decision - REAL WHEELS had to be mounted on my BT3000 Ryobi Saw cabinet. (I am not making anything for touting its name and needless to say I did not pay full-price for my saw either--I got it only after the distributor dropped the price almost 50% because they weren't selling back in 2001 in our laid back town!) So, when I wheeled my saw back into the shop (it had big rigid casters mounted on one end but you had to raise the other end almost 30 degrees to get it high enough to make use of the wheels) I knew I had to get a real wheel system.

Now, what all happened since that moment, is the real gist of this story. And also, back to the great article I mentioned earlier. I could have bought a mobile arrangement at another big-time store but it would require me to spend $70. Nope, I could make it myself. So I found that article in "The Small Wood Shop" and got busy. I drew up the plans (mentally and on scraps of paper) and with some revision to the mental and paper notes I can finally proudly say my saw is now easily moved around to store it out of the way when not in use. When I want to use it I roll it where I want, put my foot on the ledge of the mobile base, press down, and with a couple other movements I can lower the cabinet to rest on its rigid base and shazamm, the saw is ready to use!

To the mechanical minds out there, my system is an adaptation from sketches in the book by Fine Woodworking and is simply explained as an hinged "L" arrangement mounted on either end of my saw cabinets. The natural pivoting function of the casters (primary pivot) was simplified by keeping the casters close to the "hinged" area (or the shorter part and secondary pivot) of the "L" plywood fixture. I used 3/4" plywood for both the tall and short pieces of plywood (the "L") and hinged them with whatever hinges I had. With a little ingenuity, trial and error, I found the system worked great! Once I got the casters mounted on the plywood (before attaching same to the cabinet) it was only a matter of choosing the right size (thickness) of board to temporarily hold up the saw cabinet to create a "ground zero" or required space between cabinet and the floor. Next I bolted the upper plywood section to the cabinet end[s]. When slight foot pressure was applied to the lower-hinged plywood section, the saw cabinet raised, disengaging strut and (having removed the temporary board) the cabinet easily lowered to the floor. Mounting the struts was a simple matter of form and function - strut "on" and "off" position to maintain a 90 degree support or released position. If you don't get any of this you'll just have to buy your own mobile attachment. On second thought, here is a picture of the mobile platform I made for my Ryobi saw.







I think I could have had fun building the pyramids or maybe tossing those big stones around in England and all over that part of the world.

THANKS FOR READING...The Wordwright

NOTES: If you have access to a good library where archives are kept and not re-cycled, Page 79 is where the article "Machines On Wheels" shows the idea I used. THANKS, Jim Boesel, if you're still among us, your article and the handy drawings by another Jim, Jim Richey, the four pages of text and drawings are a boon to any small shop woodworker! "The Small Wood Shop" is published by The Taunton Press of Newtown, Connecticut. Also I have to add another bit of truth. This was really not the first time I put wheels in my shop; I put wheels on a 12" planer in my Tollgate Country Woodshop but before I invite you to visit that shop I have some more cleaning up to do.

Posted by Bill Venrick at 8:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The man who wrote about the [many] roads less traveled was asked dozens of time, "Dr. Peck, why is there evil in the world?" Yet in all his seminars, all his interviews, all his patients, no one ever asked him, "Why is there good in the world?"

When we are challenged to figure out a puzzle we only solve those mind games when we stop and study the configuration of the objects. When I was in my pre-teens my blind grandfather could untie knots better than I could - and he couldn't even SEE the tangled shoe strings! What deep dark secret did he have stashed away in his mind that enabled him to untie the knot in his grandson's shoe laces?

In our 58 years of marriage, my wife and I have been in several different churches (really, congregations) and we have never found a perfect church. We're not the only ones though because recently we received an e-mail from someone who had been "bothered" and he wrote, "In the past 30 years I have seen so much here...decisions made that I don't like...". Before I even had a chance to think about writing this person a response my wife said, "I'm going to write Charlie..." (We don't have any "Charlies" in our church so don't try to figure out who it is.) What my wife wrote him was nothing more than he should have figured out himself - if he had just looked at the problem instead of trying to think where he could go after he "left our congregation".

International Business Machines (IBM) does not have a monopoly on the word THINK, even though they made the word famous years ago with those word reminders you would see on desks all over the country. Before we change jobs we need to check out that place we think has "greener grass". Is it closer or farther than where we work now? Is it a new or older company? What kind of people work there? Do people seem happy who work there? Four questions have been noted and money or hours have not been considered. One time I asked a new personnel director what she thought of her new job; she said, "Bill, all jobs are really the same - you just trade problems." And she was the HR person! Admittedly it may be hard to accurately find out if most people are happy at their jobs, but it is not rocket science to read the odometer to check mileage, or in a few visits to the place it shouldn't be too difficult to get an idea of employee attitudes. THINK - it's a good start before you change.

Life is full of contrasts. Differences prevail rather than diminish. Could it be good is in the world to alleviate the bad? Poets have a field day with different climates or personalities--why can't we learn from them if there were no other pedagogue around. Rather it is obvious people do what they want to do. Axioms abound, one in particular has taught Psychology 101 with the words: "If you always do what you've always done, you will always get what you've always got." Simple. Discontent? Try something different - THINK. Perhaps we are the good that some evil people need. Perhaps we are the bad, in someone's eyes, that cause their problems. Perhaps the contrasts (in people, in patterns) produce the total picture. Could it be that it is our grandma who is saying, "Everybody is out of step but my Billy"? Hummmm. Perhaps we are where we are by God's design or providence, by fate, by chance or maybe because we were trained to be there or maybe it was just plain dumb luck. Whatever the reason, don't waste the experience.

In our country or culture we don't believe in a caste system but the truth is we just don't admit to its existence. No one dares to talk this non-existent caste system but too often, for example, when a couple marries, they suddenly discover that God makes people different from others. Often, principles of physics enters and we learn "opposites attract" and couples flail about in life, mystified at such findings. Sometimes we actually realize this is a genuine complement of personalities.

Our varying personalities and characteristics create issues when we do not regard our mates. There are social levels that literally govern certain individuals and if a "poorer" caste becomes a mate of a "wealthier" caste, problems often develop. This should not surprise us but still folks who are bred in a different social or financial climate often discover that money does mean more to some than others. My own father-in-law confessed a rather candid remark once when he said, "Marriage is the biggest gamble a man and a woman could ever make." He said that after he had been married nearly sixty years. My barber once told me, "Love is blind; marriage is an eye-opener." Good advice is available even in the barbershop.

Our country doesn't get it because one of the comments recently aired on a C-Span interview was that some great percentage, like 95%, of jobs require education past high school. I'm not exactly sure but I think some miscalculations are at fault. College is simply not for everyone! Oh sure, there are trade schools and employment educational programs but the pressure for "going to college" is one of the faux facts that cause young people to go into more debt than is practical or sensible - and consequently some never pay off those loans or take years to pay off.

Back to my theme, "We just don't get it." YES, we just don't get it: about people's differences, about the invisible caste system in our nation, about opposites attracting, about morning people, about marriage being a daily adjustment of two lives: neither is more important than the other except to those who still think man is superior to the woman -- his head is in the sand!..

Dredging deeper yet into lists of people, a fellow wordwright friend of mine in Huntsville, Alabama, shared some information written by Bill Federer (American Minute for October 5, 2009) about descendants:

"Jonathan Edwards married Sarah Pierrepont, and according to A Study in Education and Heredity by A.E. Winship (1900), their descendants included a U.S. Vice-President, 3 U.S. Senators, 3 governors, 3 mayors, 13 college presidents, 30 judges, 65 professors, 80 public office holders, 100 lawyers and 100 missionaries.

This same study examined a family known as "Jukes." In 1877, while visiting New York's prisons, Richard Dugdale found inmates with 42 different last names all descending from one man, called "Max." Born around 1720 of Dutch stock, Max was a hard drinker, idle, irreverent and uneducated. His descendants included 310 paupers, who, combined spent 2,300 years in poorhouses, 50 women of debauchery, 400 physically wrecked by indulgent living, 7 murderers, 60 thieves, and 130 other convicts. The "Jukes" descendants cost the state more than $1,250,000."

Is it still possible or plausible to say it doesn't matter what we do with our lives or be concerned about our attitudes and personalities affecting the lives of others around us? The quality of a country's heritage indeed is based on the quality of those who forged that country's greatness. This should concern us as we observe the workings of America. I am grateful for Doris Wilson, my music teacher at North Elementary in Lancaster, Ohio, because she taught us to sing AMERICA (Written by Samuel F. Smith, 1808-1895) Perhaps you recall the teacher who played the piano as you learned to sing this in school:

My country, ' tis of thee,
sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing;
land where my fathers died,
land of the pilgrims' pride,
from every mountainside let freedom ring!

Our fathers' God, to thee,
author of liberty, to thee we sing;
long may our land be bright
with freedom's holy light;
protect us by thy might, great God, our King.

"The course of human history consists of a series of encounters... in which each man or woman or child...is challenged by God to make the free choice between doing God's will and refusing to do it. When Man refuses, he is free to make his refusal and to take the consequences." Arnold Toynbee

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I need to say "THANK YOU" to my friend, James Saddler, of Huntsville, Alabama, for the data in this essay about descendants of two individuals: Johnathan Edwards and a man named "Max". THE WORDWRIGHT

Posted by Bill Venrick at 4:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)