Have you learned anything today?

Buenas dias from sunny Costa Rica. It is another beautiful 70 degree day as we come out of the rainy season, or what the Ticos would say "we are coming out of winter." The sky is clear with a gentle breeze passing through. My coffee plants are full and ripe for the picking. The mango trees are flowering and will soon produce some wonderful fruit, and our avocado tree is really taking shape. Might I say I really love living in CR. If you ever have the chance to visit please do so you won't be disappointed.

Back to the blog though, sorry I was gone for awhile with thanksgiving week having passed by, we still celebrate it here even though it is a north american holiday, and December's activities starting up in our church we have been pretty busy. First, I would like to thank Tom Fidgen for mentioning my blog on his web site www.anunpluggedlife.com (please visit it if you haven't done so yet). Secondly, I want to give you an update on the Maloof chair project. Right now I have had to change gears on put that off until January as I am currently making Christmas presents for my family here in the shop. As a missionary living in a foreign country we live by faith and the faithful support of our home churches. That being said sometimes our monthly support can be rather low, we never know what will come in each month but trust God to take care of us. So December started off rather low in the money department causing my wife and I to really reevaluate our priorities and what we want to teach our kids regarding Christmas and materialism in general. Hence we decided to pool together our resources and figure out, based on what we had on hand, how we could give the kids a memorable Christmas with out the trappings of the latest new toy or electronic gadget that in a month or so will have been broken, forgotten, or is out of date. So my work in the shop this month will be focused on that. Hopefully in January, funds permitting, I can pick up the wood for the shave horse and the seat of the rocker. I will post some pictures of the Christmas presents when finished.

On to the topic of this blog, "Have you learned anything today?" I am an avid reader always challenging myself to learn something new, gain knowledge, wisdom, and instruction. As I was working on one of the Christmas presents, the Pochade box from Tom Fidgen's 2nd book "The Unplugged Woodshop-Hand Crafted Projects for the Home and Shop" I was able to observe my ability or lack of when forming certain joints i.e. cutting dados and rabbets by hand. As I grow in my ability to use only hand tools I try to effectively evaluate every step on how I am doing. I can say with confidence that my ability to  dimension lumber has greatly increased to where I can take a rough piece of lumber and get a relatively flat square piece of wood ready to be formed into what ever shape I need. Dimensioning lumber has also help me in my ability to sharpen plane blades and chisel edges to where I can produce wonderful shavings and an extremely smooth surface using a simple Stanley no.4 Bailey plane. Taking that mentality into the finishing process has really caused me to evaluate my ability. I have gone to more traditional finishes i.e shellac. Oh, and on a side note regarding my search for a suitable alcohol to use here in CR, I went to the pharmacy and purchased their medical grade alcohol which was 96% pure but to my surprise was actually denatured alcohol. I had looked all over the country in hardware stores to no avail and there it was right down the road. So the shellac is mixed and is doing well. Back to my learning, I wasn't sure if I wanted to do french polishing or not but started viewing many videos on YouTube. What can I say about YouTube but, my word there is no end to people wanting to teach others and get their fifteen minutes of fame. I would say discernment is the buz word when searching on YouTube. I did fined a few sites regarding french polishing but was a bit confused regarding filling the grain. The wood I use here in CR is similar to mahogany and so I wanted to give it a try filling the grain. On a number of YouTube videos, especially guitar building ones, many of them used a rubbing pad with only alcohol and sprinkled some fine pumice on the wood, the wood had been coated with a spit coat of shellac before the pumice. On another video from Marc Adams school the guy used pumice and rubbed it with shellac in his pad. One said don't the other said go ahead. They both seemed to produce a fine finish but my complaint was they never showed exactly how long it took to fill the grain. They would always start then cut to the finished product. To say the least my attempt at filling the grain turned our horribly with using only the alcohol the results were that it didn't seem like the pores had been filled. With using shellac at first it seemed to work but then when it dried a white hue appeared in the shellac from the pumice. If any of you have had experience with this please leave a comment or suggestion.

So getting back to the point here is that each day I try to see what I have learned even if I am building something I had built in the past. One of the finest books every written, aside from the Bible, in my opinion is a book written in 1940 by Mortimer  J. Adler entitled "How to Read a Book." The premise is that many know how to read but don't really know how to read in order to gain knowledge, understanding, and skill. When most read they gain only information and nothing more. In a sense this is the art of observation. The author stated that "the beginning of wisdom is a just appraisal of one's ignorance. So the beginning of reading as a conscious effort to understand is an accurate perception of the line between what is intelligible and what is not." Take that into the shop to see where you are, where you need to go, and discover how you can get there. The author also stated, "we can learn only from our betters. We must know who they are and how to learn from them." Search for those who can help you grow in your ability, get to know them and discover how you can learn from them. In all again use discernment for there are many wolves out there disguised in sheep's clothing.

Take care my friends, and keep in touch

God bless
Mark Hynek