"my shop is so small I have to go outside to change my mind..."    

Each time I dispose of some heavy iron, my shop gets bigger.

My shop is so small that I have to look up to look down.

Rubberwood?  What is that?

Dave R.

That's because he's Welsh and they have all consonants and no vowels to speak of. 

So there is no "Vowel Language" from the Welsh?

Dave R.

JRB, no you don't win because you showed a picture of your Kapex.  NAINA, so that was a nono.
Tinker

Groan!

mY sHOP iS sO sMALL tHAT wHEN i gET a kEPEX (NAINA) i wILL hAVE tO sNEEZE tO mAKE rOOM fOR iT

I want to encourage Tinker to write a full book - or to just sit with a writer/interviewer (I think we all know one at FOG whose name begins with "M") to drawout and capture many of those warm and wonderfully funny stories!  Please keep them coming, Tinker.  I especially loved your series on art-in-the-family.

Dave R.

I've been telling my wife for many years now that there's no sense doing a project if it doesn't give me an excuse to buy a new tool....

Fred

Funny how the more systainers I bring home, the more other stuff I can move out to adjacent storage space, and the less small my shop seems to be. 

Festool's Corollary - Workshop size increases proportionally to the quantity of systainers found within.

Festool's Ancillary Corollary- Workshop size will increase proportionally to the quantity of systainers found within, until such time as shop occupant perceives accumulation of free corners, then additional systainers are purchased to occupy said false space, nullifying spare perceived space, a self cancelling equation. This equation is self correcting until all items in the catalog have been acquired, all credit cards have been cut up, or spouse has revoked right of occupancy, whichever comes first.


Not to be confused with Festool's Coronary, which is the reaction to a received credit card balance in the month after a loss of financial sense, resulting in the purchase of a number of new tools.

 The Steady State Theory almost -  Expansion of the Festool Universe via Torsion Physics 

Go get yourselves a beer, cup of tea, or whatever, this is going to be kinda long.

(BTW, for those of you who might partake of an occasional cup 'o tea,  You may have something to remember my father by.  He was working as an artist for the advertising agency of BBD&O  when he was doing a layout for, i think, Tetly Tea.  He wasasked to come up with an idea for stretching, or whatever, the enjoyment of brewing a cup of the product.  It was MY DAD, who first came up with the idea of the flow thru tea bag.  I don't know who actually got credit as he was one of the low men on the BBD&O totem pole at the time)

When I was in HS, (1945-49), we lived in a small house with even smaller kitchen.  No running water or electricity for first year or two in the house.  outside plumbing. Oil lamps for illumination.  The whole nine yards of Abe Lincoln type life except our heat was a kerosene cook stove in the kitchen.  since i was the mechanical one in the house (remember? brother was an artist, who at the time was mostly interrested in drawing and painting), it fel upon my shoulders to keep things like the outside water pump primed and ready for operation at all times.  The winter time meant that i had to be sure there was enough HOT woter to not only thaw out the pump, but to have a large enough supply to also prime it.  That meant i had to be sure the kerosene stove was always operable. If any of you hade the great good fortune  to grow up with kerosene stoves, you know that in itself could be no mean feat.  They worked fine when the weather was warm and sunshiney.  when it was cold and very blustery, they became the most cantankerous utility known to mankind.  I supose, in hindsight, I must have aided nature in some sneaky way, as i was often required to spend a day home from school for the purpose of restoring that cantankerous stove back to a degree of normalcy so we could eat that evening and haveenough warmt to sit at the kitchen table dressed with only a few layers less than required for survival at the north pole. 

Our bath tub was a great big wash tub that we set in the middle of the kitchen floor.  With no insulation under the floor, any water that spilled over that tub was still there in the spring.  Eventually, my project before my 2 yr vacation with my Uncle Sam, wa to remove that relic of a kitchen and build a new one for my mother.  Since the kitchen was built on about 9 or 10 pile posts, it was an easy matter to start the removal by backing the car up to the backside, tying a rope to one of the posts and driving away.  And there begins a whole collection of tales that have afforded many a fond memory.

Let's go back to my HS days i have related herein.  As i have related, both my mother and my brother were quite artistically endowed.  Brother, at the time, was interrested in drawing and painting. during those days, his art was realistic and one actually knew what the finished product was meant to be.  Mom, at that time was mostly into sewing and interior decorating.  Me, i was into hunting, fishing, farming and almost anything that ultimatly brough some sort of mess into the house, mostly by way of muddy boots and dusty clothing.   Among all of my interrests was the beginnig of my interrest in WW'ing.  I had just finished building a chicken coop in my back yard (with some help from an old Scottish cabinetmaker next door (someday i'll tell some about him, one of my alltime favorite people from those days)), i was into shop classes at school (started as freshman) and was beginning to become interrested enough in that hobby that I often found things to build at home.

during warm weather, there was no great problem.  we all found our own space to carry out our individual projects.  Mom and brother took up very little space.  Me, that was a different story and as i look back, I have no reason to complain over a question Mom asked me at one time, "Why can't you get interrested in the sort of things your brother does where they don't take up a lot of room or make a big mess?"  I was sort of put out at the time, but you know how it is with time.  At any given moment, i might be cleaning one of my guns in the very cold living room.  I loved smell of Hoppe's No 9.  At the same time, the entrance room (never used in the winter) was webbed from doorknob to chair back and on around the room with winding thread as i found it easier to rewind my bamboo flyrod by stretching the thread over as large and area as possible.  to get to my guns when i cleaned them in the cold living room, i had to crawl on my hands and knees to get under that flyrod thread.  I could streatch that winding operation into weeks, what with all of the other mischief i could find along the way.

At the same time all of this was going on, I like to cut wood into pieces and stick them together.  sometimmes, as i progressed, i learned how to plane.  The only room left for this was, guess>>>  the kitchen.  You cannot believe how big a pile of shavings I could make before i finally gave up to the reality that I had ruined one more beautiful piece of wood.  We would have to step over and around, and under to get from kitchen sink and work counter to get to the kitchen table for dinner.  sometimes, when it was stormy, I would have to crawl or climb back and forth from table to stove to sink just to keep heat in house and fuel in my tummy. 

The size of that old kitche?  Maybe 8x20.  Maybe smaller.  Atleast, it sometimes seemed a whole lot smaller.  but we did enjoy ourselves.
Tinker