Post: How to make a board

Posted by russ on 1/04/04

How to Make a Board

by Dave Barry

Most of what I know about carpentry, which is almost
nothing, I learned in shop. I took shop during the
Eisenhower administration, when boys took shop and girls
took home economics--a code name for "cooking". Schools are
not allowed to separate boys and girls like that any more.

They're also not allowed to put students' heads in vises
and tighten them, which is what our shop teacher, Mr.
Schmidt, did to Ronnie Miller in the fifth grade when
Ronnie used a chisel when he should have used a
screwdriver. (Mr. Schmidt had strong feelings about how to
use tools properly.) I guess he shouldn't have put Ronnie's
head in the vise, but it (Ronnie's head) was no great prize
to begin with, and you can bet Ronnie never confused
chisels and screwdrivers in later life. Assuming he made it
to later life.

Under Mr. Schmidt's guidance, we hammered out hundreds of
the ugliest and most useless objects the human mind can
conceive of. Our first major project was a little bookshelf
that you could also use as a stool. The idea was that
someday you'd be looking for a book, when all of a sudden
you'd urgently need a stool, so you'd just dump the books
on the floor and there you'd be. At least I assume that was
the thinking behind the bookshelf-stool. Mr. Schmidt
designed it, and we students sure know better than to ask
any questions.

I regret today that I didn't take more shop in high school,
because while I have never once used anything I know about
the cosine and the tangent, I have used my shop skills to
make many useful objects for my home. For example, I
recently made a board.

I use my board in many ways. I stand on it when I have to
get socks out of the dryer and water has been sitting in
our basement around the dryer for a few days, and has
developed a pretty healthy layer of scum on top (plus
heaven-only-knows-what new and predatory forms of life
under- neath).

I also use my board to squash spiders. (All spiders are
deadly kill- ers. Don't believe any of the stuff you read
in "National Geographic".)

If you'd like to make a board, you'll need:

Materials: A board, paint.
Tools: A chisel, a handgun.

Get your board at a lumberyard, but be prepared.
Lumberyards reek of lunacy. They use a system of
measurement that dates back to Colonial times, when people
had brains the size of M&Ms. When they tell you a board is
a "two-by-four", they mean it is NOT two inches by four
inches. Likewise, a "one-by-six" is NOT one inch by six
inches. So if you know what size board you want, tell the
lumberperson you want some other size. If you don't know
what size you want, tell him it's for squashing spi- ders.
He'll know what you need.

You should paint your board so people will know it's a home
carpentry project, as opposed to a mere board. I suggest
you use a darkish color, something along the lines of
spider guts. Use your chisel to open the paint can. Have
your gun ready in case Mr. Schmidt is lurking around.

Once you've finished your board, you can move on to a more
advanced project, such as a harpsichord. But if you're
really going to get into home carpentry, you should have a
home workshop. You will find that your workshop is very
useful as a place to store lawn sprinklers and objects you
intend to fix sometime before you die. My wife and I have
worked out out a simple eight-step procedure for deciding
which objects to store in my home workshop:

My wife tells me an object is broken. For instance, she may
say, "The lamp on my bedside table doesn't work."
I wait several months, in case my wife is mistaken.
My wife notifies me she is not mistaken. "Remember the lamp
on my bedside table?" she says. "Yes?" I say. "Still
broken," she says.
I conduct a preliminary investigation. In the case of the
lamp, I flick the switch and note that the lamp doesn't go
on. "You're right," I tell my wife. "That lamp doesn't
work."
I wait 6 to 19 months, hoping that God will fix the lamp,
or the Russians will attack us and the entire world will be
a glowing heap of radioactive slag and nobody will care
about the lamp anymore.
My wife then alerts me that the lamp still doesn't
work. "The lamp still doesn't work," she says, sometimes
late at night.
I try to repair the lamp on the spot. Usually, I look for a
likely trouble spot and whack it with a blunt instrument.
This often works on lamps. It rarely works on microwave
ovens.
If the on-the-spot repair doesn't work, I say: "I'll have
to take this lamp down to the home workshop." This is my
way of telling my wife that she should get another lamp if
she has any short-term plans, say, to do any reading in
bed.
If you follow this procedure, after a few years you will
have a great many broken objects in your home workshop. In
the interim, however, it will look barren. This is why you
need tools. To give your shop an attractive, nonbarren
appearance, you should get several thousand dollars worth
of tools and hang them from pegboards in a graceful display.

Basically, there are four different kinds of tools:

Tools You Can Hit Yourself With (hammers, axes).
Tools You Can Cut Yourself With (saws, knives, hoes, axes).
Tools You Can Stab Yourself With (screwdrivers, chisels).
Tools That, If Dropped Just Right, Can Penetrate Your Foot
(awls).
I have a radial arm saw, which is like any other saw except
that it has a blade that spins at several billion
revolutions per second and therefore can sever your average
arm in a trice. When I operate my rad- ial arm saw, I use a
safety procedure that was developed by X-ray machine
technicians: I leave the room.

I turn off all the power in the house, leave a piece of
wood near the saw, scurry to a safe distance, and turn the
power back on. That is how I made my board.

Once you get the hang of using your tools, you'll make all
kinds of projects. Here are some other ones I've made:

A length of rope.
Wood with nails in it.
Sawdust.
If you'd like plans for any of these projects, just drop
some money in an envelope and send it to me and I'll keep
it.


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Posts on this thread, including this one

How to make a board, 1/04/04, by russ.

Re: How to make a board, 10/10/05, by Al Snow.

Re: How to make a board, 5/09/08, by Kevin.