Greetings, friends. (XXV)

Greetings, friends. Well, I finally did it: After 23 entries, I took my thumb off the page and duplicated an entry number. Had to go back into Substack and retitle yesterday’s post. And edit the slug, because it annoyed me. I also definitely dragged my heels on writing this post today. Hmmm.

Well, yesterday, as I said, I failed to get up bright and early, so after breakfast I finally “got my mukluks on” as my mother used to say. Except that, actually, step one was taking my moccasins off, because said mukluks are what Besha thoughtfully got me for house shoes a few weeks ago. What I actually put on were the steel toed work boots I got in order to protect myself when I drop hot steel on my toe, as I inevitably will.

As you will recall, your correspondent had set out to make a set of hanging bookshelf brackets.

On Saturday evening, I foolishly took on a modest side project, merely by way of confirming that the ergonomics of the forge and anvil were good in the place I intended to affix the concrete anchors in Besha’s carport.

The side project was making a small steel bangle or torc out of a short length of round bar, sized to Besha’s wrist. I heated up the forge, cut the workpiece off a length of scrap I hauled up to Portland using the hot cut I forged myself last year (!), squared off the bar, tapered the ends, wrapped each tapered end into a loose spiral, and then put two reversed twists in it. That was the point at which it was too dark and I was too hungry to keep working.

Well, Sunday morning, I thought I’d just finish it up. The twists were uneven, the spirals didn’t really match, and the whole thing was, shall we say, rustic, but I had gotten carried away, and the only thing to do was to finish it. I just wanted to give it a properly round and flat shape - you know, like a torc - let it cool down, sand it smooth so that it’d be comfortable to wear, and then hot blue the thing with some paste wax. Easy peasy.

Well, I got midway through the first step, and I let it get too cold while I was still fussing with the shape, and of course I snapped the dang thing in half. By this point I’d put a few hours of work into fiddling with the thing. Rookie mistake. Unrecoverable, and totally avoidable.

How are the bookshelves coming along, you ask?

At least I’d proven that the forge and vise were usable in that configuration. On Saturday, I’d also tried the hammer drill from the tool library with a fresh bit on the boot scraper, same result — broke off the tip of the bit.

So then I called my father, because that’s what I do in circumstances like this. My relationship with the old man has had its ups and its downs over the years, but, if there’s one way in which he is a five-star, A++ dad, it’s that I can call him up nearly any time of day with the stupidest question relating to automobiles, motorcycles, firearms, woodworking, or construction, and he will have at least one helpful suggestion, if not several, and he is never, not ever, condescending about it. I love my dad for a lot of reasons, but just knowing that I have someone in my corner when I’m trying something new, and failing desperately, is a real source of comfort.

“Put less pressure on the drill,” he averred. “If you’re bending or breaking drill bits, you’re probably leaning on it too hard. Let the hammer drill do the pushing. That’s what it’s for.”

So once again I gave up on the boot scraper, until I figured out what to do with the two holes I’d already put in the steps by the side door. Went out to the anvil stand, plugged in the hammer drill and shop vac, marked where the first of two bolts for the first of two anchors should go, and let the hammer drill do the work. Wouldn’t you know? It drilled the hole perfectly.

At this point it was about time for lunch, and, not to foreshadow anything, but in the future I am going to try to remember very hard to break for lunch when it’s lunchtime and not just do one more thing real quick.

So I went and got the ol’ impact driver, and drove the first fastener partway in, just so that I could place the anchor for the other hole. Drilled that one out with the hammer drill, real neat. Drove the second fastener into the concrete with the impact driver, everything was going great, and then…

The dang head and about an eighth inch of concrete screw snapped right off the top of the fastener. Leaving me with a hole in the concrete and a fastener stuck in it with no way to get it out. Okay. Fine. Besha’s got a couple sacks of concrete mix for another project in the garden. I can patch the holes in the concrete later.

I rotated the anchor 90º to one side. Drilled again, no problem. Actually, the hammer drill chuck kept losing the bit no matter how hard I tightened it, but never mind that. I got it drilled out and I got the bit out intact. Thank you, Dad. Used the impact driver to drive the fastener into the new hole, and… Bam. Same thing happens. Now I have two holes in the driveway with screws broken off in them.

I went inside and sat on the floor and cursed and considered sobbing. Besha helped by keeping the dogs off me while I fumed.

Hey, Schuyler, I can hear you asking, When are you going to start work on the bookshelves?

(Thank you Beatrice for the link to the video.)

I stomped off to the neighborhood taco truck to get some tacos and curse my folly. The rain started up again as I walked over. The taqueria was closed. On account of the weather, no doubt.

I went back and made lunch, now about two hours late, and sat and stared out the window at the rain, and wondered about my life choices. I decided to go for my scheduled training run, even though I was fairly certain that, at the rate things were going I would be hit by a car.

I was not hit by a car. In fact, I finished my longest training run, to date. I decided to load up the 4Runner with some of the things I’ve been storing in Besha’s shop, to move them over to the storage unit, so as to make room for storing other things in Besha’s shop.

Going for a run and moving things over to the storage unit, I guess, is progress of a kind. But when work has been going through a slightly dull stretch, I need the dopamine hit of accomplishing something creative. Being able to step back and say, yeah, I did that, with my own hands and brains. And some help from my dad. Also Besha.

But it was not to be, not this weekend. I know I’d be happier if I put less weight on the outcomes of things that I have rarely, if ever, done before — things like making wearable accessories out of steel, or bolting other things to concrete, or building bookshelves from scratch, or changing the brakes on the truck. Things that, you know, actual professionals, with at least nominal training and experience, get paid to do for a living.

I know that I need to look at these things — the broken torc, the busted concrete anchors, having to make my own tacos when I’m already hungry — as learning experiences in a rich, well-lived life. That, like most mortals, I’m only going to get better at metal working and construction, and these other things, by trying, and not by always succeeding.

But sometimes, when it’s raining, and work has been dull, and nothing else feels like it’s going quite right, I really need the win. I want something to feel good about. And sometimes life just doesn’t provide it, and you just got to keep on keeping on.

I drove the 4Runner over to the self-storage facility. It was closed.

Thanks for being here for the funny stuff, and also for the slightly seasonally depressed stuff. I appreciate that some of you bother to click like, even when I’m not being funny or informative. More than you realize.

Ceterum censeo pro vigilum imperdiet cessandam est.

One thing did go right, this weekend, though — I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.