A couple years ago when I was visiting my mother she asked, "Do you want those old shelves you made in junior high?" She had stored them in the basement from when I was in 7th grade. They brought back a flood of memories. They were the last project of the school year and I remember being in a rush to finish. When I was cutting out the shape with a coping saw, I noticed I was getting off the line and felt bad for a minute, but I looked over at my neighbor who was drifting even more widely from the line. "I'm not doing THAT bad," I remember thinking.
As I drove in the nails to hold it together, one split the shelf as you can see in the photo above. I showed it to the teacher hoping he could fix it or something. "It will be OK," he told me, "You've done a good job." I was crushed that my shelves weren't perfect, but since then I've learned that very little from the hands of man ever is. If it were perfect, we wouldn't have the same impulse to keep trying again and again and we would miss out on so much fun.
We were in the same kind of rush today in the woodshop as we finished projects left over from the year, bringing a year of woodworking to a successful conclusion. The kids are all excited about coming back next year.
Do you have any old school projects to share? Send me photos and I will post them in the blog.
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