I finally finished my saw till. Getting this far has been a monumental task for me.
This is a good demonstration of how my TBI affects my woodworking and how my woodworking helps me to overcome my symptoms.
I actually started this project about a year ago (!!!). I wanted to build a relatively simple project for the shop, using only hand tools. It was chosen because I have too many hand saws without a place to call home. As always, my ulterior motives included using up my stash of pallet and salvage lumber and, of course, doing some skill-building.
The first thing I did was to select some pieces for the sides of the till. The boards were selected primarily for their size. They were then jointed and glued together.
Then I laid one of my 26” saws on one of the sides and started to visualize how to actually make this thing. It was built without any real plans, mostly just as a concept in my mind. As risky as that sounds, it’s much worse when you consider the state of my wounded brain. It’s really odd, but I can grasp concepts and ideas even though I cannot express them to others. I can also reliably remember the concepts even though I cannot remember the details from an hour or a couple of days ago. This really strange combination meant that I would work on the project until my brain was tired, and then I would do something else. Later, I would come back and pick up where I had left off.
The first task after getting an idea of how the till would be constructed was to plane the rough lumber sides somewhat smoother.
I found this work quite challenging, and I had to take a lot of breaks. Then Summer came, and the Honey-do list had some garden boxes added to it. So I took a lot of reclaimed red oak pallet wood, jointed it, and constructed a couple of simple garden boxes while the saw till sat on the back burner.
When I got back to the till, I needed to reacquaint myself with the concept and mark some lines on the side pieces for later.
It’s a good thing that I did, because a few more jobs came through the shop, including another five garden boxes, some Christmas decorations for the yard, a few oddball repair jobs and a bed for the shop dog. As a bonus, all of these tasks were giving me more endurance and improved my focus. I even felt confident enough to pull out the tailed lunchbox planer for the stock on the dog bed. I normally avoid power tools since my accident because the opportunity for personal injury or making much bigger mistakes is much greater for me because of my inability to react quickly any more.
While it was out and making dust, I skip-planed the sides of the till with the planer, first one side and then the other. The till was a shop project, so perfectly flat and smooth sides were not a priority.
I made a quick mock-up to test my concept, and then used a number 4 plane to round over the edge of a piece of rough spalted hardwood. The results were alright, but they improved a lot once I sharpened and used a number 14 round plane.
I liked the look of the spalted lumber, so I decided to use it for the lower bar to rest the saw handles on. Then some more work came through the shop, and I worked on my Symposium Award project.
I didn’t even take the sides of the till off the workbench while I built that project.
In my spare moments, I would look at the saw till and try to think my way through to the end. 10 (!!!) months had passed and it was still a long way from being finished. I refined and finalized my plans and set to work in earnest.
Stock for the cross-pieces was milled, laid out and cut. First the dovetails for the top and bottoms.
Then the tongues for the intermediate crosspieces.
And the matching tenons on the intermediate shelf.
The project was starting to take shape.
I used a modified dovetail layout technique to get an even spacing for the kerfs in the upper saw support. The 10-point dividers saved a lot of steps.
Unfortunately, I sawed the kerfs befo the chisel work to decorate the till (playing around) and creating a V-notch for the blades to enter. That created a point of failure as a couple of the “teeth” sheared when I was chiselling the notches. I attempted to reinforce the teeth, but my drill bit was 1/64” undersized, so drifting in the reinforcement dowels failed spectacularly. Doh!
It was then remade from some of the spalted lumber. All the decoration and chisel work was completed before making the saw kerfs and that went quickly.
A little bit of more playing to add a plate rail thingy from a strip of purple heart. The idea was to use the shallow shelf above to top saw support to hold some very small items. In retrospect, that shelf is too high up so it can’t be seen and anything left up there will get lost.
The two saw supports were glued and screwed to their respective cross-supports. The screw holes were plugged with plugs made from the matching spalted lumber.
It was glued and clamped. Finally.
So, after a bit more than a year I finally got the till installed. There were a few more days of “field mods” to adapt it better to my saws and my space, but I’m happy with the progress. I can now find and reach my saws, I have used up some of my salvaged lumber, my shop skill have improved, and, most importantly of all, a few folks have commented on how much better I am doing (cognitively) over the last year. This is a big win for me.