Building my shop in Costa Rica part 1

Buenas días from Costa Rica my friends. It is a glorious day here in CR sunny and 70, which happens to be the average temperature here all year round. I know it is tough living here, but somebody has to do it. Any way, while I am still waiting to get started on the shaving horse and the rocker I thought I would share with you some photos of my shop I built here in CR. Along with that I just want to share my heart with you regarding my transition to hand tools and to give honor to those who helped me. As I said I have always been involved in woodworking but have for the most part of my life been a power tool guy, I always wanted a New Yankee workshop just like Norm Abram. About a year ago I started to build my shop and had planned it to be a power tool shop. The problem was I live in the center of town here in Sarchi. This is a town full of woodworkers, but a number of years ago the municipality passed a law that you couldn't have a professional wood shop in the center of town due to the noise and saw dust. Mine isn't a professional shop but my planer and table saw made quite a bit of noise causing some of the neighbors to complain. That intern lead to a visit from the ministry of health telling me I couldn't have a wood shop. Having explained that I wasn't a professional shop was good enough for him he just suggested I find a shop outside of town to plane down my wood, which I agreed to do. In the process of building my shop, last March my son Jonathan had ask for a set of woodworking tools for his birthday, that led me to want to build him a small bench. I didn't want to take the time to drive to another shop just to plane down some small pieces of wood so I broke out my handplanes, which I had purchase a number of years ago, blew of the dust and tried to get them into shape for use. This is where I would like to give honor where honor is due. One book that helped me greatly in getting the planes ready for use to where I was actually able to use them was "Hand Tool essentials" by Popular woodworking. Reading the articles on sharpening by Chris Schwarz really helped me obtain a decent edge to work from. (Someday if I ever meet him I will have to apologize for messing up his name. I always thought it was Chris Schwartz with a "t".) I didn't have any sharpening stones but was able to use my bench grinder, and it actually worked! When I tried out the plane it actually produced a decent shaving and I thought to myself, "Wow maybe I can do this." So that was the start of my journey into hand tools. Along with that book another book I had purchase that had been sitting on the shelf for about 4 years was "Made by Hand" by Tom Fidgen. I thought it was a cool book at the time but also thought I will never be able to do what he does, and at the time I thought he had some crazy hair. One day though I decided to e-mail him about one of his projects and ever since then we have been in constant communication. What can I say about Tom but that he is an incredibly inspiring guy. He has an awesome web page www.theunpluggedwoodshop.com, a great YouTube channel and just recently started a membership website www.anunpluggedlife.com that is like nothing else, might I suggest you visit it and sign up. Anyway those books and men helped me in pursuing something I wasn't sure I would be able to do or even wanted to do but in these last 8 months I have found and incredible joy and satisfaction that I had not gotten from using power tools. Please don't get me wrong I am not one of those guys advocating the elimination of all power-tools. There is nothing wrong with power tools, but for me the joy of building grew ten-fold when I started using hand-tools. I feel closer to the wood and it has truly become a spiritual journey for me, sorry if that sounds to religious or hippyish. Well, I am going to leave it at that for now. Enjoy the pics and I will post some more on the building of the shop and personal thoughts as well.

Take care and God bless
Mark  

The pictures are of preparing the area for concrete, and pouring the concrete. Might I add after that experience of pouring concrete by hand I can confidently say that God has not called me to be a mason.