Woodworking
When we were kids, one of the rights of passage was to spend time learning how to make things out of wood. With 3-D printing and all the varieties of plastic that prevail these days, its hard to say whether kids learn woodworking any more. Some kids had a distinct leg-up with a father who proudly owned a complete woodworking shop in his basement or garage. Thewe were the dads that helped their kids create Soapbox Derby cars that looked like they had just come in from Indianapolis Raceway. And then there were kids like Spanky and his Gang that Rube Goldberged their way to amazing contraptions that were the envy of every kid like me that didn’t have a father to help them learn about lathes and drill presses. If we had a hammer and a screwdriver in my matriarchal home when I was a kid, that would have been a big tool chest. I never built a Soapbox Box Derby car and, in fact, never knew anyone who did. But now let’s talk about pump handle lamps.
I can think of two places where I got a dose of remedial work working instruction. The first was is a middle school wood-shop class I was required to take when we lived in Wisconsin. In those days of the mid-60s, boys took wood-shop and girls took home economics. Given the gender-specific nature of that curriculum, I can’t even imagine what those time slots in middle school Wisconsin are used for. I hope wood-shop is still offered, but I can only guess what they might make. As it was, we were at the cutting edge of technology with our pump handle lamps. Think about it, the old farm pump was a simple machine that turned hand-cranking into the energy needed to suction water up out of a well and into a trough for general farm use. The pump lamp was a device that took the old-world shape of the farm pump, fashioned it out of wood, introduced the modernity of electricity by placing a socket at the top and then…wait for it…had the pull chord positioned so that the pump handle action was used in miniature to bring forth the electric current. Amazing!
There were several wood-working lessons to be had in this project. You needed to pick a good piece of 2×2 soft wood that could be drilled lengthwise to allow it to house the lamp wire. You needed to figure out how to attach that in perpendicular and straight manner to a base that can somehow handle chord as it wends its way to the wall outlet. That meant you needed to do some routing. There was also a top cap that needed to be in keeping with a pump and yet still be able to securely hold the light socket. Now with the basic pump and lamp construct in place, you needed to adorn it all properly with a nice wooden trough and a faux spigot (mine was a small piece of bent bopper tubing). The most important part, the one moving part, was the wooden pump handle that was set into a chiseled-out trough of its own in the upper pump shaft. It was tricky to chisel that in far enough to accomodate the pump handle and its pin pivot point, but not so far as to puncture the shaft drilled for the chord. Then there is drilling a small hole in the business end of the pump handle that can tightly hold the beaded pull-chord. There is a bit of tangential calculation required to insure that a proper length handle pull will switch on the light and workroom equally well to turn it off again. And last, but not lest is all the finishing work with sandpaper and stain to make the lamp look as finished as possible. Finally, you are only a lampshade and plug-in away from having one of the greatest juvenile inventions of all time.
I’m not sure when I lost my pump-handle lamp or what became of it, but I know I had it in my possession for a while as an adult and I still remember it fondly. For all I know, it is pumping away a night light for some lucky kid as I write this. I was very proud of that lamp and both the effort that went into it and the craftsmanship it represented.
The other venue that added to my woodworking craftsmanship was from a sleep-away summer camp I attended. I recall that we made several objects that summer and remember that one of them was a memo pad holder adorned with imbedded multicolored tiles. The biggest message from that project was that learning how to mix materials is important and that sandpapering to smooth corners to the extreme can go too far. Everyone understands that wood has a edge and while smoothing that edge makes sense, making an object look round instead of squared makes little sense.
Yesterday started as a calm and pleasant Sunday with little on my dance card other than a late-day movie. Nature abhors a vacuum, so naturally, Kim came up with a project to use up my free time. We have both been using the new Chi Machine that moves one’s feet from side to side to improve circulation and loosen one’d joints. I supplemented that with a large folding foam pad and a radiant heating pad, recommended by my massage therapist. All this and several pads and pillows currently sits on the floor on my side of the bed. Its a good spot for it because it allows us to watch TV from there and yet it is all more or less out of the way. The only problem is that it all looks a bit messy the way a bed on the floor looks more messy. Kim’s idea was that I should have a custom bed platform made for the contraption.
I immediately envisioned an opportunity to create a Spanky and Gang affair that I could rest on while having my legs wiggled by the Chi Machine. Even Saul in Better Call Saul didn’t have such an installation. As I thought about it, it struck me as a rather simple job to design and build this platform. I did a quick drawing and took a few measurements such that I could put together a simple shopping list for Home Depot. One sheet of ½” plywood and four 2×4’s later I had what I needed. I actually had the guys at Home Depot cut all the pieces to length and bought a bunch of cheap wood screws and some dark stain to finish off the project. Naturally I measured one part wrong so luckily I had enough extra wood to recut those pieces myself. After stripping the heads of about five or six of the screws with my power driver, I wished I had bought better quality screws, but I adjusted to make them work. With my Black & Decker Workmate folding workbench one would think I would be all set, except the screws I had bought were ½” too long and being too lazy to return to Home Depot, I just used them and managed to attach my project to my workbench much to my chagrin. I then had to use my Dremel with a metal cutting blade to take off the protruding ends of the screws in a dozen places.
I did some light sanding and stained the whole affair. Had I been back in Woodshop class, I suspect I would have gotten a D for all my efforts. But, when push comes to shove, a platform like this is an out-of-the-way spot in our bedroom probably doesn’t deserve too much precision. I came to the conclusion that I should have taken more woodworking classes in my youth or perhaps spaced out the project over several days so that I could have taken my time and done a better job.