Wood Filler
I haven’t posted in quite some time, because I haven’t been doing any work since the last post. It’s hard for me to do any inlay work evenings. Between trying to get a walk in, dinner, watch TV with Scott, perhaps some guitar, and the fact that I don’t have the concentration skills I need to do it right that late in the day, I find it’s best to work on it on the weekends when I’m fresh and have lots of time. That’s the plan for this weekend, as last weekend I was in San Francisco, and next weekend I’ll be on a very large boat traveling between L.A. and Ensenada. So I’ll have new posts after this weekend.
However, my thirst for sawdust is unabated, and I’ve kept the DTs at bay with the reading of my newly arrived Woodcraft magazine. I ordered the sample copy, because it was a freebie, and I thought it might be educational, since I am learning both inlay and the attendant woodworking skills simultaneously, possessing neither at the outset.
The editor’s note at the front of the issue was a list: "You know you’re an old woodworker when…" So many of them applied to Antiguo; he would’ve loved it. I laughed, because I recognized him. As if that weren’t enough, later in the issue was an article about a guy who became a woodworker when his dad died. He couldn’t give up the expensive (and still being paid for) shop machine they’d bought and brought home when his father died the next day at the age of 52. In the intervening years, he’s become a respected crafstman, and then started his own woodworking school. He’s created an amazing career. However, he said, "I don’t know that my path would have taken the direction that it took. Unfortunately, where I am today is something (my father) would have dreamed about his whole life. But it probably never would have happened to me if he had been alive."
I have had that thought so many times during this process. If Antiguo were still here, I wouldn’t be doing this. It never even occurred to me. But I like the feeling that I’m his legacy, and working with the tools, learning about his work in a deeper way than I ever did before, brings me a calm, a healing peace, that I don’t seem to achieve anywhere else currently. And for that, I am grateful.
