#forthouston

I love Nashville so freaking much. It’s crazy hot here - opening the front door is akin to opening the oven door, and the days won’t get cooler than 32˚ from now on. Today I looked at the jean jacket I have hanging in my closet and laughed that I had thought I might need it. Been spending a lot of time at the pool, which is usually not even cold enough to be refreshing. Kyle has had a lot of short work days so we have been able to spend a lot of time together. It’s been really awesome. Been cooking a lot of healthy meals, and eating at cool restaurants, drove to Kentucky last Friday to visit Willet Distillery and Barton Distillery.

And we’ve been rock climbing at Climb Nashville A LOT. Kyle and the rest of the crew climb a lot and I tend to go with them whenever I visit but have generally disliked it - I get up on the wall, scare myself with visions of my rental harness ripping apart and dropping me to my death, or exhaust my measly muscles and yell at Kyle “WHY AM I DOING THIS? THIS IS SO STUPID” from the wall. But I bought a month-long membership for the gym and yesterday my very own shoes and harness were delivered to the apartment and now I’m a real climber. Tackling 5.10 routes now 💪🏽

Fort Houston doesn’t have air conditioning. It’s the first time I’ve ever had to carry around a rag to mop up my sweat. I leave the shop with a thick coat of sawdust and other airborne shop dirt pasted to my skin. It’s just lovely. But I’m finally settled there and have a good grasp of the shop and how it runs. I guess there was “another girl” who only wanted to rent the bench space and not use the machines and I was confused with her so the FH staff didn’t think to schedule me some orientations until I asked about it. On Saturday I went in and met with Brooks, the wood shop coordinator, and Whit, one of the metal shop coordinators, to get some orientation. Man, was that helpful. Until that point, I was feeling really stressed out about how I would physically get started on the project without really knowing the details of these machines and the general inner-workings of the wood shop - etiquette, power usage, cleaning schedule, etc. But Brooks was incredibly awesome and went through a bunch of the machines with me as we squared up a couple small boards. He told me a bit more about the community and how everyone is super friendly and willing to assist wherever they can. He said that if I ever get to a point in my project where I’m entering uncharted territory and want some advice, everyone has varied experiences to share. 

Whit is an equally awesome dude who was happy to show me around the metal shop. I don’t plan on doing any metalworking but since I’m paying for access to the shop, I thought I might as well get acquainted with it. My only experience with metal has been modifying files and chisels at Inside Passage. He showed me how to use the metal bandsaw, which was super cool, AND ... I did my first weld! I’m pretty sure it was “Gas Metal Arc Welding” aka MIG. Now that I know the basics of it, it just takes practice to get the feel for it, Whit called it essentially muscle memory, which takes some time to get down. 

That really horrible looking one second from the top is my first one, HA, the 3rd one down was Whit demonstrating again, and then the last two were my other tries. I need to work on keeping the weld small and as flat as possible, so that it takes less grinding to make flat and pretty. But it felt awesome to actually get to try it out. 

Last week I ventured out to Mimm’s Lumber, a father-and-son lumber joint near the Fort, to look at some wood for my cabinet. The first time I drove over, I drove past twice looking for the sign for the place and couldn’t see it so I went home. It’s in a block of abandoned-looking used car part places and army surplus stores so I didn’t really want to wander around alone too much. Went back the next day with Kyle for back-up and found the entrance finally. The only stock they had quarter-sawn was white oak, which I’m not crazy about, so I kept looking around and found a nice stack of 6/4 Mahogany and decided on that.

I spent a lot of time working on my project plans and figuring out how I’m going to construct this cabinet. I realized that it’s not likely that I will complete the project while I’m here in Nashville, so I’m going to leave the construction of the doors for later. Hopefully I can get the case and the back frame and panel completed before I have to head home. One good thing that came out of working for Kroft&Co was getting to better understand plans for construction, as well as calculating boardfeet and getting the best yield of each board. I wrote down all of my measurements and calculations, adjusted them a couple times, and then finally got to dimensioning my boards. 

After getting them down to 1.25″ thickness (yes, I realize I could have just purchsed 5/4 stock instead of 6/4 but I wanted to be safe...I’m such a chicken when it comes to keeping my stock over dimension until the very last second), I let the pieces rest for a day in case the insane heat and humidity in the shop was going to be an issue. Having chosen pairs for edge jointing based on colour and grain graphics, I then edge jointed them for glueing up. I got my hand planes tuned up to see if I could still get a nice edge joint by hand. Two sets worked out nicely, and I was pretty happy that I could still figure out where the problem spots were and plane away bit by bit until I got a good joint. And the other two had to go back to the jointer.....sorry for cheating. My bench doesn’t have a vice or any bench dogs so I set up a makeshift square block to plane against.

There is some reversing grain with really open pores on a few of the boards that came away from the planer with some tear out. I’m looking forward to doing surface prep with my smoother plane to get everything flat and happy and nice to the touch. 

Finally, I got all of the pairs glued up. Next time I go in, I will cut each piece to length and get to work on my doweling jig for the case joinery. 

I’ve been so scared to screw it up, but I keep reminding myself that it’s just wood, I can always buy more and try again with more knowledge and experience behind me. 

SO, I had all of these plans. I stressed about them so much that I used up all of my Saje Stress Relief tincture before bed every night. I had the next 7 months pretty well planned out - buy a car, stay in Nashville for a month, build a cabinet while down there, come back to Toronto (although I had seriously considered moving home for the summer months to save money), work as much as possible so that going to school wouldn’t totally break the bank, move out of my apartment, and then drive an epic road trip to Port Townsend to start their Furniture Making Intensive at the end of September. I would worry about where to live and what to do in 2017 later. So I went car shopping. The only car I was really interested in was the Kia Soul (in black, duh). I checked out a couple used models and eventually “settled” on a brand new 2016 EX+ model with some pretty killer features. I bought a brand new car. I freaked out A LOT about it. Got sold on some extra insurance features like a total sucker but my payments are only a little bit higher than what I wanted them to be. It’s the cutest damn car you’ve ever seen and I loooove it. 

4 days after my purchase, I get an email from Port Townsend - they’ve cancelled the program. 

Just like that, all those plans I stressed over and finally figured out, were pretty much for nothing. I was confused and devastated. They’re still running the course in January, and I still really want to go. Am I going to enjoy a January road trip? Probably not. I hate winter driving. January is a long time from now, and I can’t plan my sporadic life so far in advance, but at least the option is still there. So I convinced myself that it was shitty but okay, and then I was like OMG I BOUGHT A CAR, and then I further convinced myself that the car was a good purchase, I’m driving it to Nashville and now I’m more of a real adult that isn’t stuck on public transportation, and tbh the notion that I never have to take the Greyhound home again is sooooo sweet. 

Huge bummer, yes, but who knows, maybe some amazing opportunity will come up this summer and I’ll be able to take it because I won’t be heading to school soon. Maybe Nick Offerman will tell me to come work for his shop in California and pay for my working Visa and ask me to be his date to the Golden Globes. Who knows. At the very least, I pushed myself to make a big-girl decision and buy a car, and I don’t regret that at all. Amen.

ANYWAYS, I’m all settled in Nashville for the month now. I’m staying with Kyle and his roomie Paul at their apartment in a lovely gated complex with many pools and barbecues. I’ve been swimming at least once every day since I got here. Yesterday, I went to get set up at Fort Houston, a co-op in Nashville that has a woodworking shop, machine shop, motorcycle shop, and printing shop.

I paid $300 US to rent a my own bench there for a month, which is pricey, but I’m hoping to get some experience with the machine shop too. They hold events and classes there and as I member I will get discounts, so hopefully there will be a couple good classes this month. My plan for the month is to build my first personally-designed cabinet. It’s going to be a big project and, knowing me, I’m going to make it very difficult for myself by sticking to fine furniture-making methods as often as possible, even when another method might be quicker and easier. I will be pouring over my notes from building the Wabi-Sabi cabinet at Inside Passage and building this cabinet with the same construction - dowel carcass with a frame and panel back. I’m hoping to figure out how to install the interior shelf with a sliding dovetail joint. I imagine that I’m going to have to change my mind about things many times throughout the process but that’s part of learning. And hopefully by the end of the month, I get it done.

Have you ever felt creative energy as you've walked into a room? That's exactly how it feels inside Fort Houston. Makers of all kinds spread throughout the 10,000 sq ft space creating everything you can imagine. We fell in love with Fort Houston and what their team is working towards and knew it was the perfect location to introduce Nashville to CreativeMornings.

Fort Houston is a place for you to facilitate, grow, learn and work. Occupying 10,000 square feet in the Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood, complete with a full-scale wood shop, print shop, bike shop, photography studio and miscellaneous work and desk space. Here’s how it works: You pay a monthly membership fee, and you get to make things in here. Oh, and taking a class or two can be fun, too, but you don’t have to be a member to do that!