Precision

After a week of skinning various pieces of wood to reveal their inner beauty, i put down my plane.

In response to my bleatings about RSI, John (Cabinet-maker-in-chief) showed mercy and introduced me to the art of the dovetail joint.

A seasoned dovetailer of his calibre can make the whole exercise in precision look like a simple process of light sawing and delicate wood love with a chisel. I found it slightly less simple.

His show-and-tell session lasted no more than half an hour and resulted in an immaculate no-gaps-joint.

Around six hours later I produced a joint that looked a bit like a set of badly looked after teeth.

He examined my offering while endeavouring to find some small redeeming feature to use as means of encouragement.

He couldn't.

"It's all about precision, you see." he reiterated.

My head swam with examples of my innate lack of precision both practical and intellectual.

Kenny drools over my dovetails

I ignored them and set about a new set of dovetails, my tongue poking out in concentration - like a 6 year old learning to write.

I will learn precision, I will!

Days passed.

I sawed and chiseled away at four further dovetail sets, each one improving minutely in quality on the one before.

The fifth was no triumph but would serve its purpose.

John, probably running out of ways of turning negatives into positives, has redirected me to my cast-aside Clifton jack plane.